RE: Are Designers Over-designing?

Looking at the redesigned Penguin Threads book covers, I'm not sure overdesign is their whole problem so much as the wrong design. I agree that the covers of these classic books did not need to be changed, and this was not the direction to go. The colors and embroidered illustrations are so cutesy and child-like that the covers take away from the stories. While some of the stories in the collection may be considered children books, at least a few of them are not, and theses new covers make a large gap between what you see and what you actually read. Maybe Penguin was counting on the fact that everyone knows these books and will know that they can be enjoyed by all ages regardless of what the covers are saying.