THE CHALLENGE_
As part of the Penguin Student Design Awards, Penguin books released a brief to redesign celebrated author Haruki Murakami’s book Norwegian Wood. An already acclaimed story, Penguin were looking for the cover to be representative of the story and the themes it portrays, specifically looking for the design to be able to stand out on shelves as well as on e-book platforms.
THE SOLUTION_
Through analysis of the book I realised the story revolved around themes of love, death, the passing of time and relationships. When presenting audiences with the existing book cover, the majority were surprised to learn of the story's themes as the book cover didn’t seem to present any of them. The challenge was to combine as many of these themes in one design to best represent the story. A minimal approach was adopted to combine all these themes to allow for the book to be effectively eye catching and understood whilst on the shelf, encouraging it to be picked up.
PUBLICATION.
Using the book's forest setting as a visual tool, I looked into using tree rings to represent the individual components of the cover as well as to make reference to both the physical and emotional harm many of the characters face within the story. Combining the themes of love and death I arranged the elements to resemble a skull and showed conflict between the two main characters through them facing away from each other with a broken heart in between the pair. Both characters and the heart also acting as the eyes and nose of the skull, to further establish the presence of death in the story and to make it more obvious from a distance.
