I love Hische's covers for Barnes & Noble. Her super-ornate, 19th-century style appeals to a subconscious feeling of what a book should look like. As books become more and more digitized and divorced from the physicality of ink-on-paper, designs like Hische's will appeal to the upscale, nostalgic market of readers who think books are a thing to be displayed as well as read.
Unfortunately I'm not nearly as impressed by the Word Cloud designs. They feel weightless, with no sense of history behind them, and word clouds, no matter how carefully designed and constructed they may be, always strike me as somehow slapdash.
That said, if you like that sort of thing, more power to you. Just because Hische's designs are the end-all and be-all for me doesn't mean that everyone else feels the same way. I see nothing wrong with new designers constantly creating new designs for old books. It gives us work and keeps us off the streets.
