Penguin Clothbound Classics / Coralie Bickford-Smith

What do you all think of the designs she does, as professional designers? I'm an amateur admirer, and I like some of the work, but it seems to me to violate a number of design principles. Take the Nutcracker one she did (red on green, tones too similar), or the Tale of Two Cities (Dark red on dark blue). The title placements on the spine are all over the place and some vertical, some horizontal, but she seems to have complete control of the series; like she supposedly just says "here's the design" and they sign off on it? The whole enterprise seems random, and I find the tesselated "single element" thing tiresome. The Puffin Classics line which has no named designers seems to be much better than this one.