Judging an Audiobook by Its Cover: Why Visuals Matter in a Story Told By Sound
A meditation on listening to books while working in visual design, how cover art shapes our reading experience even when we can't see it, and what this reveals about our multi-modal consumption of literature.
Yellow: US Cover by Farrar, Straus & Giroux creative director Rodrigo Corral and graphic designer and illustrator June Park
Blue: UK Cover by Kishan Rajani, senior designer at Faber
Red: US Barnes and Nobles exclusive coverSally Rooney's Intermezzo (2024) found me on the subway to 30 Rock, her words filtering through my headphones like a quiet rebellion against New York's cacophony. The narrator's measured Irish cadence accompanied me during my morning commute, along with the screech of subway brakes and garbled announcements. This latest audiobook experiment—part New Year's resolution, part surrender to my increasing need to multitask—marked my entry into a world where literature must adapt to survive: audiobooks for commutes, podcasts for workouts, online book clubs for digital communion. Yet somehow, in this sonic transformation of literature, the cover's influence persists—much like how Alvin Lustig's abstract designs for New Directions in the 1940s changed how readers approached modernist literature—the visual still reigns supreme.
Above: Alvin Lustig's Book covers, 1940 for New Directions.What surprises me about my affinity for auditory storytelling is that, as a designer, I usually prefer visual consumption—my life revolves around the careful consideration of how things look, not how they sound. The audiobook, that strange hybrid of ancient oral tradition and Silicon Valley efficiency, has become our compromise with time—a way to inject literature into the spaces between subway stops and Slack notifications. I found myself conjuring entire scenes in my mind through the passive act of listening, almost like entering a meditative state. But, of course, as a designer, it’s impossible to ignore the visuals entirely. We’re predisposed to judge a book by its cover; it’s practically an occupational hazard. And a good cover doesn’t just package a story—it promises an experience, priming us for the world inside long before we encounter the first word.
“Book covers carry an entire visual language, meant to convey not only the essence of the story but also a promise of the experience waiting inside.”
Book covers carry an entire visual language, meant to convey not only the essence of the story but also a promise of the experience waiting inside. It was my first time “reading” Rooney, and I use the term “reading” liberally here, since listening transforms the experience entirely.The bright, chequered cover of Intermezzo (by Rodrigo Corral and June Park of FSG) recalls both Josef Müller-Brockmann's precise grid systems and Peter Mendelsund's contemporary work for Kafka's complete works—where symbolic elements serve as both literal representation and metaphorical framework. This modernist chess set against its yellow grid wasn't just a placeholder; it became the story's framing device. “(The designers) wanted to make sure this makes sense to — and also appeals to — the U.S. market.” Hence, Intermezzo's multiple covers—three variations in primary colours, from UK (cover by Kishan Rajani) and US publishers—feel less like a marketing strategy and more like an acknowledgment of our fractured reality. The yellow edition's chess motif speaks to strategy and intellectual play, the red to emotional intensity, and the blue to melancholy and distance—each version offering a different entry point into Rooney's exploration of brotherly estrangement.
Left: Peter Mendelsund’s designs for Kafka, Schocken Books.
Right: Josef Müller-Brockmann’s Swiss style posters.
Set against a rainy Ireland, the story follows Peter and Ivan, two brothers navigating the complexities of age-gap relationships and self-preservation following their father's death. Rooney's writing invites readers to linger in that space between longing and loss—a space where, surprisingly, a cover, even in an audio format, can still shape how we engage with the world within. The chess pieces, with their elongated shadows stretching across that yellow grid, become metaphors not just for the strategic nature of human connection, but for how we navigate content consumption itself—always calculating our next move across platforms, formats, and attention spans.
The irony of my literary multitasking isn't lost on me: as Rooney's characters grapple with modern disconnection, I'm listening to their story while scanning my phone, another participant in our culture of perpetual partial attention. This persistence of visual design in audio formats speaks to our current moment, where content must exist simultaneously across multiple planes of consumption. We live in an age where books aren't just books—they're Instagram posts, TikTok transitions, Kindle thumbnails, and Goodreads avatars. It's this strength of visual association that gives a cover its staying power, embedding itself into the cultural consciousness alongside the story it represents. Think of the sweeping emerald dress from The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo (2018) or the anguished black-and-white photograph from A Little Life (2016)—covers that have become shorthand for entire reading experiences, their designs as viral as their narratives.
“It’s this strength of visual association that gives a cover its staying power, embedding itself into the cultural consciousness alongside the story it represents.”
Left: Covers of the most popular Booktok books.
Right: Tiktok screenshots from @alifeofliterature, @emilymiahreads and @kateslibrary.This visual virality hasn't just changed how we discover books—it's transformed covers into content, making design as quotable as the text itself. When readers share their recent #booktok reads, they're not just tracking progress; they're participating in a visual conversation about literature that spans platforms and formats. The proliferation of these popular books also welcomes the success of projects like Goodreads' "Your Year in Books", a Spotify Wrapped for books of sorts. The rise of carefully curated bookshelf aesthetics suggests that we're not just reading stories anymore; we're collecting and curating them as visual artefacts of our digital identities. A book cover today must work harder than ever: it needs to arrest thumbs mid-scroll, translate meaningfully from bookshelf to iPhone screen, and somehow telegraph both literary legitimacy and social media savvy.
Left: Goodreads desktop interface.
Right: Amazon’s Audible Mobile App.What's fascinating is how this visual-auditory tension reflects larger shifts in our relationship with narrative. We're increasingly comfortable with hybrid forms of storytelling—like Spotify video podcasts shows that demand to be both watched and heard, podcasts with crucial visual components, audiobooks that refer back to their covers like distant lighthouses. This isn't just about how we consume stories; it's about how design has evolved to bridge our fractured attention spans, creating visual anchors that help us navigate between formats and platforms. It’s a curious experiment in design psychology: do we experience the same narrative differently when primed by colour, by platform, by the unspoken language of design?
“Do we experience the same narrative differently when primed by colour, by platform, by the unspoken language of design?”
And that’s what makes modern book design so compelling: it exists in the liminal space between function and fiction, packaging and prelude, where covers must serve as both container and catalyst. For Intermezzo, the cover wasn’t just an invitation to press play; it was a deliberate design choice that shaped my experience in ways I’m still unpacking. Because if every book cover tells a story, then every audiobook listener starts with a visual echo—an image replaying in the mind, anchoring the intangible. In this world, a cover isn't just a first move—it's the entire opening strategy, influencing how we see—and hear—a story before we've even begun.
