From: DJ Stout
Subject: Re: Thonk Wring
Date: February 16, 2006 3:25:22 PM PST

At the end of the session we had a hard time deciding how to plot the three completed directions on the evaluation map because the majority of our ideas seemed to fit into one slot on the map—the unexpected low sales quadrant. This might be the result of our just letting go and not getting hung up on real world practicality in our responses to the questions—or it may be that we’ve designed so many magazine covers over the years the status quo thinking about covers that sell is so ingrained in us it is hard for us to objectively place any of our Think Wrong ideas into the high sales quadrant on the evaluation map.

A reigning king of editorial design, DJ Stout was closing in on two major magazine redesigns at the same time he completed his STEP covers. Stout and his astute team, Erin Mayes and Julie Savasky, savored the quick schedule and tight deadlines as a refreshing break from these long-term projects, and they were eager to break free of the editorial guidelines they’d been mired in for months.

A flurry of solutions poured forth from what they describe as extremely effective exercises. “The brainstorming session made me think about what a great team of conceptual thinkers my team of designers had become,” says Stout, but they were struck by the stark contrast of the think wrong methodology when compared to the actual assignment. “It was so bizarre to me to be reading all the think wrong material, which is all about breaking away from parameters, and then to read the strict STEP parameters in that context,” Stout says.

It comes as no surprise that their favorite cover violates all those parameters. “Every magazine wants to make the conceptual process of coming up with great covers into some kind of science,” says Stout. “It’s not a science, it’s an art. Art scares people—especially magazine executives and circulation directors. Art is mysterious and it can’t be boiled down to a couple of hard and fast rules.”

Still, they found themselves “jaded” by their own experiences, discarding some good ideas they knew would never make it past their own critique. Like one that played upon another hot issue in the publication world: Jesus drawing cartoons that make fun of Mohammed.

But the fact that they got that far away from a sellable concept convinces Stout that the exercises worked for them. “I believe we think this way most of the time anyway,” he says. “We just don’t have the time to formalize the process.”

RIGHT OR WRONG?
“DJ’s team seemed to really spend some time and engage with the exercises, and generate a lot of good, valid directions,” says Bielenberg. “It worked for them. The one they chose is definitely pushing the boundaries of magazine covers, and the thinking wrong framework made the cover possible. I think that STEP could have chosen any number of those designs on a spectrum of very comfortable to very uncomfortable.”