Take a genteel painting, maybe featuring a swooning woman. Add iridescent neon type for a shock to the system. And thank (or blame) Ottessa Moshfegh for getting there early. Clockwise from top left: ...

Every bookshop shelf tells the same visual story now. Romance, fantasy, literary fiction: the covers blur into one another, shaped by algorithms, stock imagery, and the tyranny of the thumbnail.

You know the work. But you might not know who made it. From the 1950s to the 1990s, book designer Janet Halverson created covers for an array of authors and titles: Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the ...