Seen at a Bookstore

In a bookstore, on a shelf full of books that have been banned, I saw the current edition of Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. This is the cover, from Penguin Classics:

I did a double take, for a second thinking it was a parody, and then an actual take (with my camera). 

It turns out this is one of 12 in the Penguin Orange Collection Series, which came out in 2016: a "bold series design offering a modern take on the iconic Penguin paperback."

Seeing it with the other 11 covers shown in that link made it not quite as bad as it was in isolation, but the use of floating elements from the book's narrative, the kitschy replacement of the letter "O" with pills, and the way the penguin is placed to interact with the mop and pail still rankles me. (And that's a very awkward apostrophe in the title; it looks like an acute accent with too much space on the right side.)

Some of the other covers also trivialize their subjects. The Twelve Years a Slave cover, for instance, uses images of a cat o' nine tales, a set of shackles, and a violin and bow, with the bow tucked under the penguin's flippers. The Crucible has the penguin immersed in a cauldron boiling over a wood fire. Ha! Ha! Ha! Funny penguin.

I have yet to find any reference online to who it is that designed these covers. I should have checked the book at the store while I had the chance.

All I can say is, they seem like student work, and that's an insult to student designers.