The Audiobook Thief
Ah, the audiobook. A medium that I’m sure many designers — especially us design students — are familiar with in use, but are unfamiliar with in practice. That’s no surprise, as an audiobook is mostly an auditory experience, so we as designers shouldn’t have to worry too much about designing for them, right? Alas, that’s where we’re wrong. An audiobook is much more than just an auditory experience. It is also an experience that has a highly visual approach attached to it. Don’t know what I’m talking about? Then check out the images below for an example:
The above image is the cover art that I designed for my audiobook version of The Lightning Thief. Why redesign it? Well, to put it simply, the original book cover was way out of dimension. The original consists of more rectangular dimensions, as opposed to the more square dimensions required of audiobooks. The design that I created is a design that is familiar enough to readers of the original book — due to the cityscape in the background, the lightning bolt, and of course, the sea — but it is also a design that is refreshing for readers due to its minimalistic take on the original book cover. And listeners are, essentially, experiencing a more minimalist version of The Lightning Thief.
The above is a screenshot letting the listener know what chapter they are on, and yes, I deliberately designed it that way in order to assist the overall user experience of the audiobook. As you can probably observe, the audiobook is being listened to on an iPod. So when the listener is curious as to where they are in the audiobook, they can easily just look at their iPod screen, and viola, they know exactly where they are. Sweet, right? You bet it is. You can also see that the chapter number and title are also included right above the audiobook UI controls, which further aids the listener in being confident about where they are in the audiobook.
Not only did I make sure that every individual chapter had its own image, I also made sure that the metadata of the audiobook itself was also worthy of consumption by its listeners. Why focus on the metadata? Well, all too often, the amateurs creating their own audiobooks — and even well-known companies, at times — tend to either leave the metadata out completely or provide subpar metadata that doesn’t quite leverage its content as much as it could or should.
In the image above, you can see the that all of the necessary metadata fields are filled in appropriately and, of course, accurately. I have the correct author, release date, and narrator. And in the comments section of the metadata, I also made sure to add in something supplementary for readers to see and visit: the official Percy Jackson website so that they can explore and have a good experience with it.
It is small things like these —appropriate metadata, chapter artwork, and appropriate, aptly-sized cover artwork — that many tend to leave out in their audiobook efforts, but that make for a superior user experience overall — even if it is just for an audiobook.
John Toral is a student in the Digital Media program at Utah Valley University, Orem Utah, studying Interaction & Design. The following article relates to (Audiobook Project) in the (DGM 2260 Course) and is representative of the skills learned.
