If there’s one word that comes to mind when looking at this issue’s cover, it’s ovipositor.

Of course, this issue’s design doesn’t look like an ovipositor, which, coincidentally, is defined as a tubular organ through which a female insect or fish deposits eggs. But the word was presented to the designer of this cover as a way to help him arrive at this solution. If that seems wrong, you’re right. This issue’s cover is an experiment in thinking wrong.

When you’re given a problem, say, tying your shoe, your brain immediately goes into problem-solving mode. Fortunately, your brain is exceptionally well-trained: Previously learned behavior proves that a certain thought process can produce a certain result, so your brain simply skips the heavy thinking and follows those prescribed paths. You tie your shoe just as you’ve done a thousand times before. This is called a heuristic.

Unfortunately, just as you successfully solve hundreds of problems a day using heuristics, it also kicks in when you’re trying to solve a design problem. Given an assignment, your creative process navigates those familiar pathways through your brain, producing the exact same results you’ve produced a thousand times before. So if you’re trying to design the cover for the May/June issue of STEP, heuristics are bad. When designing, this is called heuristic bias. But how do you remove that bias? Take your thoughts off- track? Steer clear of the status quo? You think wrong.

Thinking wrong is the method adopted by San Francisco firm C2, where John Bielenberg, Erik Cox, and Greg Galle have built their company upon the concept of removing the heuristic bias from their thinking in order to generate exceptional ideas. Naturally, when C2 was asked to design the cover of STEP, they wanted to do it right, so they thought wrong. Four design teams headed by Clive Piercy, David Salanitro, DJ Stout, and members of C2 themselves led by Cox were guided through a series of exercises designed to take the creatives on the ultimate concepting trip. The best cover was chosen by the STEP staff including the editor, art director, and publisher.

In the end, a cover design that’s been conceived through this process shouldn’t necessarily be wacky or weird, says Bielenberg. In fact, it wouldn’t necessarily look much different than any other STEP cover. “It’s not the object,” he says. “It’s the thinking and the process. You can’t always look at something and say, ‘That’s the result of thinking wrong.’” But completing the think wrong exercises themselves serves as a catalyst, giving your mind permission to explore other solutions.

“Because you’ve put in the time doing the exercises, you can feel like you’ve pushed it in every direction possible,” says Cox. “It gets you to a result that you might not have gotten to without those exercises. You’re opening up the possibilities by breaking up the way you work.”

C2 isn’t convinced that all the teams actually succeeded in abandoning their heuristic biases. However, observing the process that these four designers followed—and oftentimes fought against— gives plenty of insight into how creatives think, wrong or right.