As someone who loves design (especially to do with books and texts (e.g. Coralie Bickford-Smith's work with Penguin Publishing)), this is very interesting to me. This may not have to do with digital humanities per say, but the interplay of physical books (especially publishing companies and their need to $compete$ with digital texts) with digital modes of communication has led to the design of more aesthetically pleasing book designs. This idea makes me think that maybe books are viewed as elitist forms, and digital texts are viewed as 'lower' forms.