Brief:

Redesign a classic fiction book cover that holds visual and emotional depth, reimagining it through contemporary design while retaining its cultural essence.

About the Novel:

Noukadubi (The Boat Wreck) — a Bengali romantic drama by Rabindranath Tagore (1906) — explores love, fate, and mistaken identity in colonial Bengal. The story follows Ramesh, a man torn between societal duty and personal desire, whose life changes after a tragic boat accident. Through poetic storytelling, Tagore reflects on destiny, identity, and emotional resilience.

Concept & Design Approach:

The cover was designed to translate the emotional undercurrents of Tagore’s narrative into a visual language — subtle, poetic, and deeply human.

Explored themes of identity, separation, and emotional stillness..

Early sketches focused on water motifs and female portraits to visualize emotional flow.

Final concept merged symbolism (boat, river) with minimalist composition to balance drama and serenity.

Front Cover Concept:

A stylized portrait of a woman dominates the design, reflecting quiet strength and inner turmoil — the essence of Tagore’s female characters.
Her flowing hair merges with water-like lines, symbolizing the river and the boat wreck central to the story.
An earthy color palette of ochres, browns, and muted reds evokes nostalgia and connects to early 20th-century Bengal.
The Bengali title (েনৗকাডুিব) appears in elegant handwritten calligraphy, offering authenticity and poetic warmth, while the author’s signature in red adds reverence and presence.

Back Cover Concept:

The back features a postage-stamp style illustration of a small boat — a quiet metaphor for loss, fate, and drifting through life’s uncertainties.
A marbled, aged-paper texture adds timelessness, making the book feel like a preserved artifact from another era.
The spine repeats the Bengali title, ensuring cultural and visual continuity..

More than a redesign, this was an emotional journey — finding poetry in stillness, and meaning in the spaces between…