Olufsens sidste rejse

In 1927–28 the Danish officer Ole Olufsen travelled through Niger with the botanist Olaf Hagerup and the taxidermist Harry Madsen. Jesper Kurt-Nielsen tells the story so that all three voices stay present in the text, and the photographs are striking and melancholy in equal measure.

The challenge was to stay true to the subject and the period without falling into the obvious stylistic clichés of the time. I worked closely with Anitta Aaen Sundby, production manager at Gyldendal, who has an unusual instinct for materials and pushes back in the way you want a collaborator to.

The interior is printed on 150 gsm uncoated Munken Pure. The paper has a warm, cream tone that gives the book a certain weight in the hand. I gave the photographs a faint warm duplex, partly for depth, partly to pull a little colour onto the pages. The same spot colour runs through headings, folios and captions.

I wanted to avoid the obvious typefaces from the period; they are loaded with stereotype. After a good deal of searching I chose Miller Text, Matthew Carter’s 1997 reading of an older face. It gives the text a discreet sense of having been designed, without imitating anything.

The wide margin towards the gutter is not only there for luxury. The heavy paper means the book does not open all the way to the spine, and the margin keeps the text from disappearing into the fold. It carries the captions as well.

What I really wanted was more full spreads, because the photographs deserve them. With that paper the book would have become too thick. The finished book shows, fortunately, that it was not necessary.