New Work For Yahoo! and Wired Magazine
Wednesday, July 28, 2010 at 1:45PM 
If you head out and grab a copy of the latest (as of press time) copy of Wired Magazine you’ll find contained therein one of my latest projects: a collaboration with longtime partner in crime Daniel Krall to produce a comic book-style advertising piece on behalf of Yahoo! and their suite of mobile apps.
To see it you can download a pdf here or visit this site.
This was an awesome project to work on. The assignment went like this: come up with a modern superhero story that integrates Yahoo!’s products in a fun, interesting way. We had three pages to work with — one splash page for the front and two panel-based pages from there.
I sat down with Daniel and we brainstormed for a couple of hours before settling on an approach. From there I wrote the script, which Daniel and I then discussed and revised. After that we submitted it to Wired, then we all collaborated with Yahoo! to make the pieces fit.
We had to act and think fast. Daniel, in particular, put in effort above and beyond anything that I thought a single man could accomplish. Lots of late-night emails and revisions and discussions and phone calls. Lots of strategic back-and-forth. Lots of balancing acts as we all worked toward the same goal. That’s how it goes.
Eventually, we got there. The finished piece both meets the client’s needs and speaks to the intended audience in a way that we believe to be both effective and interesting. Which is, after all, the whole point.
I could repeat this process again and again and be happy each time. There’s nothing better than collaborating with talented people and seeing it all come together. Awesome.
Reader Comments (2)
Congrats Neal and Daniel. I've only seen the online version, but it looks awesome.
How did the project come about? How did this come to you guys instead of through Yahoo's other agency(ies)? Just curious.
Keep up the excellent work. I'm sure there will be many more of these killer projects coming in the future.
Thanks as always for the compliments, Chris.
This project came to me via Daniel, who is a regular contributor to Wired. They picked him to do the project for Yahoo! and asked if he knew a writer that would be a fit. I was, naturally, all too happy to fill the role.