Our
Stories
Leonardo the Renaissance Man
Earlier this year, The Discovery Channel -- a long-time client -- needed a Web biography of Leonardo da Vinci to accompany its new cable series, "Doing da Vinci." The show was about expert builders who try to construct da Vinci's inventions using only materials from his time. Our job was to create an online timeline that profiled the inventions mentioned in the show and elaborated on da Vinci's life and work. We began by story-boarding the narrative and creating a chronology. Our forte is picture research, so we started an extensive search of photo libraries and image repositories to track down specific visuals to illustrate the story. Because image copyrights can often be tricky, nailing down license agreements is crucial before getting down to writing.
Satisfied that we had the images we needed, it was time to put the project into the hands of our science writer John Roach. John is a thoughtful and imaginative writer who frequently contributes to National Geographic and numerous science journals. He had gotten a head start on the research, so it didn't take him long to provide a script. At the same time, our graphic designer Kent Harris had conjured up a selection of creative cover page illustrations that matched the look and feel Discovery was using on the show. The producers at Discovery were wowed.
At the end we delivered a beautiful Flash slideshow story packaged in a custom 825 x 510 pixel template that synched with Discovery's ad servers to produce a new advertisement with every click -- and we did it from start-to-finish in two weeks flat.
To see other SwitchYard stories, go to our showcase page.