The Brief
This university brief asked for a book cover design for a modern reprint of the Ernest Hemingway classic, ‘The Old Man and the Sea’.
The novel charts the story of an old Cuban fisherman who attempts to catch a giant marlin over several weeks on the open sea, eventually losing his catch to a school of sharks. Whilst there any many themes and possible interpretations of the novel, the issues that really spoke to me were those of struggle, chaos and loss. These were the aspects I wished to represent and formed the basis for the design problem I wished to solve.
The Solution
In order to interpret these themes entangled fishing wire and two opposing fishing hooks were photographed with a 60mm macro lens. These images were then composed as a digital pastiche on top of one another, creating a random and chaotic visual metaphor for the chaos of the struggle. The central image was then set against a cold monochromatic background to imply the darker depths of the sea as well as the depths of the fisherman’s grief for the loss of his ultimate prize.
