Are Designers Over-designing?

Somewhat inspired by Karen's discussion in class last night, I was thinking about book covers. More specifically, about whether or not we (designers) care too much about their meanings and appearance.

That certainly sounds stupid, seeing as we're all in a graphic design program because we like to design and most of us happen to like books but bear with me.

Earlier this year, I read an article by Emily Keeler, who immerses herself in literature and seems  uncomfortable with the idea of literary classics being repackaged as extra pretty contemporary design pieces:

"Right now it feels like there's an increasingly murky connection between culture and lifestyle, between something we perpetually produce together and something materially aspirational, individualistic and consumptive. Why else would Anthropologie have those pretty reproductions of the original J.D. Salinger novels? The box set is the only fiction they carry in their online books section. As the physical book becomes increasingly rarefied, so too does it shift into the territory of signifier; beautiful books become consumable objects that describe the taste of the reader who proudly, tastefully, displays them."

Books were certainly not always designed the way they are now. A hard, single color jacket typically did the trick and we read them because we were aware of the author's name or had been told of the quality of the words inside. There were no Peter Mendelsunds around to help seal the deal for us at the bookstore.

Does this growing trend of redesigning classic literature into visual commodities damage the integrity of the words inside it? Or is it just a smart way for publishing companies to keep selling books and encouraging reading? I lean towards the latter but I have been considering the former more often of late.

This could very well be a worthless argument on my part, but it's important to see a product through the eyes of someone who loves the actual thing without caring for the aesthetics that come after a marketer or designer enters the picture. We (designers) carry the responsibility of subjecting the world to our vision of how something should be presented, so perhaps Keeler's perspective on books should matter to us about a lot of products.

Are there specific products you care about but feel uncomfortable with excessive design treatments that now come with them? Are there certain kinds of products that shouldn't be turned into objects of high design (for example: Campbell's is now selling Warhol-looking soup cans)?

One last thing to think about is the importance of self-awareness when we take on an object that could conceivably be used for decades. No matter how good we think our design is, one day, it'll look lame:

"The thing about graphic design is that it exists as ephemera, an aesthetics of the everyday that is embedded in time. It's immediate and therefore quickly obsolesces. It's the reason that the original 1984 cover of Jay McInerey's Bright Lights Big City looks so dated, and why the 2009 edition looks like the SNL opening credits from the same year..."