The scent of a freshly bought book – crisp pages, glossy sheen, fascinating design and if it’s a hard cover – even better! Whether it comes in the mail or you buy from a bookshop, the anticipation and excitement of flitting off to realms beyond for an avid reader can be described as almost palpable. And… it is the art of publishing that breathes life into the vessel, nurturing it to create form and vision; before it can carry readers off to marvelous worlds of imagination.
This distinctive vision of creativity is what sets any publishing entity or publisher apart, even in this digital age of Kindle and Audible. The journey begins with intrigue and immersion. Bound with a delectable tangibility, the design that entices, the colors, hues, letters, engravings, inscriptions, all but woo readers into capitulation.
Such is the sojourn and experience of Seagull Books. From gripping reading lists and riveting catalogues to enchanting calendars and more, Seagull fashions an affair that connects the sensory with the poignant and emotional at a deeper level.
Initially specializing in books on art, theatre and cinema, the Kolkata-based publishing house was founded in 1982. Since then, it has expanded to include some of the finest endeavors the literary world has to offer: compelling works from Africa, Europe and the Arab world, apart from an India list to a plethora of new and classic literature by diverse and marginalized voices.
The publishing house epitomizes ingenuity, originality and scintillating artistry in not just its selection of books, befitting choice of translators; but most importantly its stylized arrangement and evocative design.
Recognizing the eclectic genius of Seagull Books, the publishing company has been honored with the Aficionado Award 2025 presented by Salone Internazionale del Libro di Torino and Frankfurter Buchmesse. The award is presented annually to “recognise and pay tribute to the people, companies, and initiatives that innovate and impress in original collaboration.”
Naveen Kishore – Founder Seagull Books
Helmed by founder Naveen Kishore; recipient of the Goethe Medal and a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters, a published poet, a much-exhibited photographer as well as a theatre lighting designer; strokes of virtuosity in design is performed, produced and perfected by Seagull Books’ Senior Editor and Graphic Designer Sunandini Banerjee. Marking 25 years of an extraordinary life at Seagull Books, Sunandini is a translator who also educates and prepares forthcoming generations of publishers at the Seagull School of Publishing.
Sunandini Banerjee – Senior Editor and Graphic Designer Seagull Books
Exhibited in India and abroad, Sunandini’s creations, her digital collages exquisitely designed in the first instance for many of Seagull Book covers, catalogues and illustrated books embody ethereal sublimity. The vision behind the artwork is a celebration of the voice, the art form, the creativity and the human connection. Through a fantastical visual entry point, Sunandini’s vision seems to be both a divergence as well as convergence of the aesthetic with the reader’s imagination. It is a pulsating dialogue… a conversation between a publisher’s identity, author’s voice and a reader’s perception.
Seagull Books has been pivotal in shaping cultural and politico-social narratives for over three decades through its array of artistic undertakings in the publishing landscape – also including Seagull Foundation For the Arts and Seagull School of Publishing. The publishing house weaves stories, emblems of knowledge, motifs of history, identity and societal values that moulds perspectives and inspires an interconnected world.
In the words of the Aficiondo Program: “The way in which they connect all of these activities – with the authors, the artists, the translators and designers – is truly inspirational.”
Excerpts from summaries of books illustrated by Sunandini Banerjee – Process, Journey, Vision
The Loss Library and Other Unfinished Stories. Ivan VladislaviĆ.
with illustrations by Sunandini Banerjee
This book is simple in its intent—it sets out to suggest that the stories that are lost end up being etched in our minds over time and slowly grow into a garden of images that complete them enough for us to sense the possibility of time and progression and the here and the now. There are never any successful beginnings or endings. The stories that are incomplete live on in memory with equal stature as those that appear complete.
The main design decision lay in the choice of paper. The natural shade. In the palette of the collages, done in black and grey and off-white. In the plates that are hand-pasted rather than printed directly onto the page. Reminding us of the accuracy and dedication of manual labour, for each plate in each book had to be pasted by human hands.
As it was in this one.
Victor Halfwit: A Winter’s Tale. Thomas Bernhard.
translated by Martin Chalmers
illustrated by Sunandini Banerjee
My brief was: ‘Go where the forest takes you.’ I did, and found a deep purple night or a brown and green one. An animal with magenta fur or a bird with golden yellow wings. A blue-black raven whose green eyes shone like the buttons on a gentleman’s suit. We all have our forests. The ones we love, the ones we dread, the ones we roam in through the world of our literature. The ones we hide in too.
This book has some of mine.
I refused to give any firm shape to Victor Halfwit. He was for me Everyman. As is the Doctor, the eternal Good Samaritan. Struggling through the forest. Fighting to stay alive.
So, on the one hand the forest, the dark, the race against time.
And, on the other, the text. Standing up to the visual onslaught of the collages. Forcing you to stop for breath before you plunge into an image, or helping you gulp in air once you emerge from the dark. Layer upon layer of photographs, drawings, sculpture, painting, myth, religion, folklore, cinema, music . . .
My forest, our forests, built with word and picture.
Seagull Books Catalogue, 2011–2012.
Handspun fabric. In 21 variations and as many colors. The edges of the ‘object’ dipped in gold. The sighing of the pages when you turn them. Like the sound from the heart when it is sundered from the loved one. A marriage of intent and chance? An intuitive design tool? Perhaps both. And the paper. With specially designed textures scanned and printed on the white. Like paper that a fire singed but didn’t burn. So—resilient, the urge to survive. Like the books we make. And the way we make them. The catalogue of our books and our passions. A catalogue that happens once a year and is new each year. A catalogue that gives you reveals the publisher’s intent without any rhetoric or explanation.
This one is about ‘Loss’. Of all kinds. Gestured at through the collages that use old family photographs. Yours and mine. The old-paper textures and shades. The flowers, like pressed memories from a summer long ago.
The words, that speak about times and peoples and philosophies lost.
And the pictures that speak of loves gone for ever.
A catalogue that says: though much is indeed lost to us, the beautiful book lives.
Still.
— **
Chiseling Stone into Life
What inspires you, he asked. Oh, everything, said the woman. The woman was an artist. Not a painter. Though she could paint. Nor a sculptor. And yet I had seen her carve stone into shape. Or give fresh life to a block of dark wood. Seen clay being born from her fingertips. As she molded and cajoled it like a goddess. The anemic white of paper would turn into a rainforest or a blooming garden in spring complete with an army of caterpillars waiting to transform into butterflies under her persuasive glance. A wordsmith too. One who would chisel other people’s alphabet into forms that glittered like language at its resplendent best. Or transform seemingly isolated words into poetry. She found suitable and amiable company for lonely sentences that longed to be strung together into heart-rending prose. Oh and let me not forget her mind. Like a river in the mountains. Great river. Eternal and dark. One fine day suddenly and without warning it overflows. Flooding the world. - Naveen Kishore
Images courtesy: Seagull Books
