Behind the Scenes with J.J. Abrams

The theme of the magazine is mystery, and magic,

and the importance of mystery in our lives,

and some secret things, that if I told you,

it would ruin the entire experience.

Every few years, we hire a guest editor.

We look through the Wired world and try to identify

people that we think are cool

or have especially powerful ideas

that we could bring to the magazine

and have, what we hope, is a powerful collaboration.

So, JJ was on our list for a long time.

The very first meeting with JJ,

we decided to do an entire redesign of the issue.

We wanted it to look like an issue of Wired

that almost felt like an episode of one of JJ's TV shows.

What's about to come out of that jungle

is something I can't control.

He definitely has a great eye for graphic design.

He's got strong opinions about graphic design

and is a real type-nut.

And then, you go, Oh, that's what that is,

and you still get this exact layout,

but right up here in the corner,

it'd be a photograph, on a white paper.

We found this amazing photographer,

a fine art photographer named Uta Kögelsberger,

who we sent around the world

to photograph our Mystery issue, Photo Essay.

Cover to cover, it's the most visually intense issue

of Wired that I've ever worked on in my three years here.

We have Randall Sullivan writing

about an American Stonehenge.

We have JJ, who has made a contribution,

and we also have his screenwriter who worked together

with the great graphic novelist Paul Pope

to create a special Star Trek comic

that ties into the movie and also takes us back

to previous Star Trek television shows.

When you think about it,

Wired is about mystery and puzzles,

and the search for meaning inside science and technology,

so it actually was a perfect fit

with what JJ works with in his work.

The need for mystery, the role it plays in our life,

why we enjoy it, why we need it, and some factors of that,

are actual stories about enigmas,

things we don't understand,

the neuro-science of why magic works.

We've gone out to some of the greatest,

most re-known puzzle creators in the world.

People like Will Shortz, who does

NPR Sunday edition's Puzzlemaster sequence,

and does the New York Times crossword puzzle.

We've gone out to Dr. Sudoku himself, Thomas Snyder,

to create a crazy, very geek-friendly version

of a Sudoku puzzle.

It's like nothing you've seen before.

There are puzzles that are really, really obvious,

and then there are puzzles that are less obvious,

and beyond that, there's mysteries galore.

Almost on every page, there's a mystery to be had.

There are little things that seem amiss,

where you have maybe a border on a picture

that doesn't quite line up,

or something that seems misspelled or a letter missing,

and I can tell you that everything in there

is intentional, so the closer you look,

the more you'll find.

It'll be on fire because of this.

It is the craziest thing I've ever seen.