Asheville, NC – August 11, 2026 – Continuing its daily quest for greatness, award-winning strategic communications consultancy The Darnell Works Agency (DWA) today announced the release of Issue 5 of The Shot Chart (The Best of Universal Positive), the agency’s quintessential zine highlighting its most historic, fascinating, and impactful collaborations. The new edition, titled “Transitions,” examines the evolving relationship between human-driven creative mastery and emerging AI-augmented tools reshaping the global creative industry.
For more than three decades, DWA principal Roger Darnell has been helping to shape remarkable stories for bold business leaders and their partners. His Key Skill Set, consisting of Account Management, Customer Service, Planning, Writing, Media Relations, Measurement, and Reporting, remains the backbone of the agency’s results – and the throughline of The Shot Chart.
“Working for other maverick media firms and my own agency for three decades, I have consistently helped shape-up amazingly impactful business stories,” Darnell said. “This particular moment marks a shift: decades of pre-AI creative instincts are meeting tools that extend them in fascinating ways. While my expertise was forged in a pre-AI world, I am increasingly working in one that is augmented. This issue of The Shot Chart explores what carries forward, and what is changing.”
Issue 5 creatively features current DWA clients Cutters Studios, Fivestone Studios, and Hyperquake, alongside scores of global creative visionaries the agency has collaborated with since its launch in Los Angeles in 2000. The release of “Transitions” also reflects DWA’s ongoing experimentation with emerging AI technologies, innovations that are increasingly influencing the agency’s core niche of the global creative industry. Used thoughtfully, these tools are preparing DWA for the future while reinforcing the agency’s longstanding commitment to human intelligence, adaptation, and communications best practices.
Universal Positive, the agency’s editorial banner, continues to deliver unique insights and actionable ideas drawn from DWA’s daily pursuit of excellence. Available on the agency’s website under Custom Publications, each issue of The Shot Chart serves as a curated artifact of the agency’s legacy, its collaborators, and the evolving craft of strategic communications.
