From: Erik Cox
Subject: STEP cover
Date: February 24, 2006 5:56:44 PM PST

We finally were able to clear the deck and get to the cover project. It’s been a totally crazy week. Sorry. Kind of weird to have a problem that’s about thinking wrong. It was good to see that it worked. We definitely have some solutions we’d never come to just blindly brainstorming. Had a very funny call with David. He’s got a bunch of stuff going on as well but seems to be into it. Saw DJ’s note, he seems to be into it. Haven’t seen anything from Ph.D. Looking forward to seeing what everyone does.

What was it like for the C2 team to test their own methods? “Very odd,” Cox says. Although he’d helped author the exercises and administered them to his clients, Cox hadn’t had the opportunity to think wrong in such a focused way. C2 designers Daniel Choe and Tory Ford met with Cox (and some New Belgium beers) to tackle the cover design in one quick sitting.

Easy for C2 were the time limitations and what Cox describes as the “let go point,” which comes a lot faster due to their familiarity with the end goal. “Once you get in these methods of working, it automatically starts producing results,” he says. “I tend to like the time restraints. I like the spontaneity.”

Discarded ideas like wrapping a monitor, Christo-style, or creating type with twist-ties didn’t have the level of impact they were looking for, especially once they realized the value of having a face on a design publication—something they thought was certain to attract attention due to the heuristic bias of the magazine industry itself. “The ironic thing is that these guidelines are created with the intention of standing out, but every design magazine is using the same guidelines so every design magazine tends to look the same,” he says.

Piecing together three important words throughout their process—pink, baby, and Eames—yielded the cover Cox and his team thought was sure to be a winner. And here’s one place where Cox is certain the think wrong way is best: Plotting it on the high sales vs. unexpected grid makes the decision a bit more academic, he says. “It removes the ‘I like it’ response.”

RIGHT OR WRONG?
“He was sincere about following the exercises to get somewhere but the final composition was not necessarily pushing the limits of the way he likes to solve problems,” says Bielenberg. “I don’t think he would have necessarily used a baby or pink or Eames unless he was influenced by the process, but the way he solved it graphically is completely within a bias. However, within the language of STEP magazine covers, a picture of a baby’s face in black and white is definitely alternative.”

Stefan Sagmeister once said that his best work always took some guts. I know that thinking wrong takes guts too. Did it take guts to run this cover? I think not.”