Book Jacket Design | Austin Montelius

Book jacket © Austin Montelius

Above Proposed dust jacket for Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, designed by Austin Montelius (2014), undergraduate at  the Department of Art at the University of Northern Iowa, in a graphic design studio course (as taught by Roy R. Behrens).

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Bertrand Russell, quoted in Norman Sherry, Conrad and His World (London: Thames and Hudson, 1973)—

[Joseph Conrad] thought of civilized and morally tolerable human life as a dangerous walk on a thin crust of barely cooled lava which at any moment might break and let the unwary sink into fiery depths.

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Anon, in Academy (February 20, 1904)—

In appearance Mr. Conrad suggests the seaman. His figure is stalwart and short, his dark beard well trimmed, and his walk nautical. Meet him near the docks and one would write him down "ship's captain" without hesitation. But his eyes, curiously distinctive and striking, mark him out from his kind. Ship captain he may be, but his eyes proclaim an artist.