This year, our very own John Jay was asked for the huge honor of being the Jury Chairman along with other design and education leaders. He spent two days in Washington, D.C. viewing the best in architecture, industrial design, fashion, landscape design, communications and interactive with a top practitioner of each design discipline. In what John has said “was an amazing experience” and “a humbling reminder of just how little I know”- the jury selected ten outstanding recipients including a Lifetime Achievement honor to Richard Saul Wurman.

Learn about the other recipients here, and read a little more about Evan Roth, founder of the Graffiti Research Lab who helped design the EyeWriter.

A typical show by David Neevel might include painting, photography, electronics, sculpture, slides or a chainsaw covered in mirrors. For Propellers, this month’s First Thursday exhibition at the W+K Portland office, David has foregone variety and installed dozens of propellers on motors on wires that make their way through the Wieden+Kennedy building.

What this show lacks in variety it hopes to make up for with 900 solder connections, about a thousand zip ties and three-quarters of a mile of electrical fencing.

According to his artist’s statement, “The propellers represent ideas.”

What’s that supposed to mean, David?

Doors tonight at 6.

Our beloved co-founder, David Kennedy, was recently inducted into the 63rd American Advertising Federation Hall of Fame.

David is one of the most honored individuals in his profession, having also been inducted into the prestigious New York Art Directors Hall of Fame, as well as New York’s One Club Hall of Fame. Additionally, he has been awarded Gold, Silver, and Bronze Lions at the Cannes Film Festival and his work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art.

For the past 20 years, David’s primary focus has been fundraising for the 35 Tribal Colleges that make up the American Indian College Fund, Wieden+Kennedy’s longest- standing pro bono account, for whom we have created and placed millions of dollars worth of public service print and television advertising.

The American Advertising Federation Hall of Fame represents the best in the advertising industry and David earned his rightful place. Congratulations, David!

Along with Brad Heller, the technical co-founder, he’s been working on some pretty cool stuff. Read about the history of Revisu, their latest developments and how Clifton once ran a 12-person circus in Seattle.

Q: How did you first hear about PIE? How did you feel when you got accepted into the program?

Clifton: Before PIE was a thing, my friend Rick Turoczy and I talked about his concern that so many brilliant people with great ideas were packing up and leaving Portland for San Francisco, which is the first place you think of when you’re looking for funding. His dream was that Portland could one day not only stop losing great minds to other cities, but actually attract people from other places looking to make it big in the startup world. A while later, Rick announced he was working with W+K to create an incubator that would start taking us in that direction.

I never expected to get into PIE. Almost 300 startups applied, and I learned enough about probability in high school not to put all my eggs in that basket. But when we got the word that we were in (exactly one week before the course would begin), my life turned right around with that one phone call. Suddenly I was going to have my own business, try to make an impact on design teams around the world. You don’t get many phone calls like that one.

Q: Have you lived in Portland before, and if not, from where/when did you move?

A: I moved here from Medford in 1999, the day after graduating from high school. If you have to ask why, you haven’t been to Medford.

I’ve left Portland six times since first moving here. I keep coming back. There’s a lame yo-yo joke in there somewhere, but I can’t bring myself to say it.

Q: How and when did you meet Brad Heller, your technical co-founder?

A: Brad and I met about a year ago, when he was brought on to be a developer at AboutUs. I was the user experience designer there at the time, and when PIE started taking applications, we decided to submit his idea for what we were calling “revision control for designers.” Looks like they dug the idea.

Q: In addition to being a sponsored yo-yo player, you mentioned that you once worked for a circus. Tell us a little bit more about that?

A: It was called the Emerald City Circus. Not too creative there, I know. But my best friend, a magician and escape artist, invited me to Seattle to start a circus with him. In six months, we’d grown from two to a dozen people: Commedia dell’Arte-style clowns, musicians, jugglers, strong men and fortune tellers. It was all for charity: the Children’s Hospital of Seattle. Every penny went to the charity, so we eventually just ran out of money. Not a good business model. But it was lots of fun.

We built our own escape apparatus out of a 55-gallon drum. Totally not safe. We were forced to take out a million-dollar life insurance policy in order to perform in public. And I can safely say today, even as students of Houdini and never having found a lock we couldn’t pick, we had no idea what we were doing.

Q: What was your product like at the time you applied for the PIE program? What is it all about now?

A: When we pitched the idea, it was called PixelStew, and during our interview at PIE, it was made clear that nobody in the room liked the name. PixelStew was a simple concept that allowed users to upload design files and keep track of version history. We soon landed on Revisu, which is shorter and emphasizes both “review” and “revision” as keywords, and best of all, revisu.com was available.

Q: What are the next steps for Revisu?

A: We’re rolling out our public release today, April 4th. The new version gives users better file management and sharing options, facilitates better conversations around the designs, and just feels better to use. We’re also going to introduce premium accounts, which will let users integrate their Revisu projects with Basecamp, offer more privacy controls, and let entire teams upload files to the same account.

It’s a really exciting time for Revisu. We wouldn’t be here without PIE, our advisors, beta users, and W+K helping us out, so we’d like to thank everyone who’s been with us since September. Here’s hoping it only gets better from here on out.

Visit Revisu on Facebook and Twitter, or email clifton@revisu.com for more information on this very cool product.

This month, we’ve been lucky to host the latest gallery exhibition by our own Jim Riswold, PHILOSOPHY IS NOT FUNNY. Check out some photos from the show’s opening, a Q&A with the artist and an essay below.

Q: You’ve had a lot of experience with creating gallery works and staging exhibitions. How have your interests and aesthetics evolved over time?

A: I’ve always called my work Absurd Realism.

I think my most recent work is a more mature form of Absurd Realism.

My 2011 World War I show, The War To End All Wars That Fucked Up And Didn’t End All Wars, had a lot of pieces that were poignant and absurd instead of just being silly and absurd.

Or something like that.

Q: What is your W+K show about? What inspired you, and what moved you to create the pieces? 

A: Most of the unfunny work in the show is on loan from the University of Washington Philosophy Department.

Marni Francis Bacon Beardsley conned me into doing some new pieces for the show and making some as big as her mouth and my mouth put together.

That’s some real big big.

Seriously, I made some new unfunny pieces, resized some existing unfunny pieces and finished some unfunny pieces I never completed for the original unfunny series.

The new unfunny pieces are Leibniz is the Best of All Possible Cookies, Hannah Loves Heidegger, Postal Workers of the World Unite!, Nobody Gets Derrida (Derrida, Hegel and Kierkegaard Walk Into a Bar), and Foucault is Some Heavy Shit.

The whole Philosophy For Children and Dogs section is new and unfunny, too.

I can’t help myself:  I like to make stuff.

And, in case you were wondering, all the unfunny stuff is for sale.  There is this thing in the art world called edition of.

Q: What draws you to the absurd and silly?

A: Life is absurd and silly.  I like life; therefore, I like the absurd and silly.

Q: Was the exhibition something you’d already been concepting and working on? How much of it was designed specifically for the W+K gallery space?

A: In 2008, my pal, former professor and then current chair of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Washington, Ken Clatterbaugh asked me to do “a piece of art like my Hitler art but without Hitler” for their newly remodeled digs at Savery Hall.

Being smart, Ken suggested a piece about philosophy

I agreed.

I overdo everything.

I did ten pieces as a permanent installation and gift to my beloved Philosophy Department and called it Philosophy Is Not Funny.

Ken and the department were so grateful they kindly named the fancy seminar room in their fancy new digs The Jim Riswold Seminar Room.

Sometimes smart philosophers do dumb things.

Seriously, the gesture made choked me up and made my Aged Ps very proud.

I think the role of my philosophy degree is significant in ways I can’t comprehend or fully explain.  The closest I ever came was an essay Ken asked me to write a few years ago for nervous philosophy majors and their more nervous parents.

It’s called Hegel Won’t Buy Your Father a New Truck.

Q: Was anyone at the agency involved? How have they supported you with this exhibition?

A: Plato, Spinoza, Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Marx, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Arendt, Sartre, Foucault, Derrida and myself got a lot of help from a lot of people at Wieden: Ademar Aristotle Martinian, Marni Francis Bacon Beardsley, Tommy St. Augustine Alfson, Matt George Berkeley Blum, Chelsea Galileo Galilei Guidry, Peter Zhou Yang Yue, Blakely Jacques Derrida Dodson, Brie Jean-Paul Sartre Spicer, Rachel Maurice Merleau-Ponty Miller, Lisa Immanuel Kant Kadous, Aaron Jean-Jacques Rousseau Rayburn, and Ben Voltaire Vickery.

If Plato, Spinoza, Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Marx, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Arendt, Sartre, Foucault, Derrida or myself have forgotten anybody who helped us, please forgive us. Philosophers, while smart, are often absent-minded.

“Hegel Won’t Buy Your Father a New Truck.” by Jim Riswold

Pursuing a philosophy degree is disconcerting.

Ask my father. When I told him that I wanted to be the next Hegel, judging by the look on his face, you would’ve thought
I told him I wanted to be the next Larry Flynt.

Paul Riswold had different plans for Jim Riswold. Ever since 1973, when I sold more candy bars than anyone else on the International Footprinters hockey team, he was certain I was destined to sit alongside Morgan and Rockefeller high up in the corner office of American business. This, my father reasoned, would allow him to retire early and have his successful son buy him a new truck.

He also reasoned that a philosopher son would mean no early retirement and no truck.

Yes, my son is a member of the Hegel Society of America; yes, he understands the notion of Change; yes, he accepts Strife as essential to Progress; yes, he can argue dialectically; yes, he sees things as Parts of a Whole; yes, he views himself as a character in the Unfolding of History and, yes, he has a penchant for thinking in capital letters; but none of that is going to get me an early retirement or a new truck, now is it?

Ask my college roommates, Pat McGough and Scott Smolinsky. They spent their school years holed up in Balmer Hall learning how to line up decimal points and have since gone on to successful careers lining up decimal points. They also spent an inordinate amount of time trying to understand why their philosopher roommate would not eat in order to save money to buy a first-edition copy of John Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.

They, like my father, also doubted the career prospects for philosophers.

I’m terribly sorry, Mr. Riswold, we have no use for Hegelians here at Boeing at this time, but if you check back in six months…

Ask any girl I didn’t go out with while chasing credits in philosophy. (This, unfortunately, was pretty much every girl with a pulse, but that’s another and much longer and more embarrassing story.)

Pat’s roommate is kinda cute. Too bad he’s a philosophy major.

No love life, no food, no “Philosopher Wanted” ads in the job opportunities column and no chance of buying my father that new truck is no way to leave school, but somehow my first-edition copy of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding and I soon after stumbled upon a career in advertising.

Long, boring, self-indulgent story short, I’ve been told by people who have nothing better to do than write about advertising that I’m pretty good at it.

Riswold’s campaigns may have created more American icons than anyone since Walt Disney. You would not, however, suspect it by looking at him…Riswold looks more like the seven-year philosophy undergrad he once was at the University of Washington than one of the most powerful forces in American advertising. [1]

Flattering hyperbole, yes, but I don’t think I would’ve been the subject of such fawning nonsense if it weren’t for my background in philosophy. I’ve said this once, if not a hundred times before: The wondrous and wonderful years I spent in Savery Hall have enabled me to look at things in, hopefully, a different way. At the very least, reading the Sartres and Hegels of the world provides proof that, yes, there are far more difficult things to comprehend than all the really dumb stuff that happens constantly in the world of advertising.

It has also, in rare moments of lucidity, allowed me to realize there are far more important things in this world than advertising: family, friends, art, first editions of Locke, literature and baked beans. While the baked beans bit may sound flippant, it isn’t; because when you come to grips with the fact that something as inconsequential as baked beans is more important than advertising, it allows you to create great advertising.

So I guess I can summarize all my answers to the whole what-good-does-being-able-to-wade-through-Hegel-do-for-a-career-in-advertising question by saying philosophy taught me something that’s unfortunately in far too short a supply in my profession: perspective.

Good thing, this thing called perspective. Just think how much of it there might be if there were more philosophy majors, calorically challenged or otherwise.

It’s worked for me. The influence of philosophy in my career has led to a happily-ever-after life: I have two beautiful children; I’ve survived two cancers and premature male-pattern baldness; the value of that first edition of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding has moved a few decimal points to the right since 1979; and I may just buy my father that new truck yet.

Either that or a copy of Terry Pinkard’s excellent 780-page biography on Hegel.

[1]: Cory Johnson, “Mr. November,” George, October 1996.

When W+K digital strategist Dan Viens challenges you to a race, you accept – even though you know you’re going to lose (you really don’t want to mess with Dan Viens)…and even if you’re television talk show host Jimmy Fallon.

Yesterday, Jimmy Fallon moderated a panel at South by Southwest Interactive, “Digital Sport: Know More, Do More” featuring Stefan Olander (VP, Digital Sport, Nike), Fred Santarpia (General Manager, VEVO), Andrew Wilson (EVP and Head of EA Sports) and Olympic Gold and Silver medalist Allyson Felix.

During the Q&A after the panel discussion, digital strategist Dan Viens noted that most people were asking lots of data- and technology-focused questions, but no one was asking questions of the Olympian on stage.

Viens stood up at the mic and challenged Fallon to a race, the winner of which could then run against Allyson; Fallon accepted.

One of the panelists counted down, and Viens and Fallon sprinted down the 700 ft. aisles. Fallon stopped in the middle to kiss a woman in the audience, and Viens emerged as the triumphant winner, of both the foot race and of facial hair prowess.

“I beat him, and we hugged,” Viens said. “He said, not only did I beat him, but I had a much better beard than he could grow.”

As anyone who has witnessed the majesty of Viens’s beard can attest, this is just and true. And how has Fallon handled his defeat?

Challenge accepted, Jimmy.

Wieden+Kennedy is proud to host one of our own, Jim Riswold, in the W+K Gallery this March for the opening reception of PHILOSOPHY IS NOT FUNNY, a show about Hegel, Kant, Spinoza and their equally unfunny contemporaries.

PHILOSOPHY IS NOT FUNNY
Thursday, March 1
6-10 PM
224 NW 13th Avenue
W+K Foyer

About the Show
Initially commissioned by Riswold’s alma mater, the University of Washington, this is the first time PHILOSOPHY IS NOT FUNNY will be shown in Portland. Several new pieces, including FOUCAULT IS SOME HEAVY SHIT, POSTAL WORKERS OF THE WORLD, UNITE! and the installation of PHILOSOPHY FOR CHILDREN AND DOGS, were created specifically for this exhibition.

The show will hang from March 1 through March 30. This marks Riswold’s second major Portland show in a matter of months, following the November premiere of THE WAR TO END ALL WARS THAT FUCKED UP AND DIDN’T END ALL WARS at Augen Gallery.

See you there!

This week, the eighth class of our 9-month, in-house advertising school W+K 12 introduced themselves to the Portland office with crème brûlée donuts, mimosas and an exhibition of their “abecedarium”, a “back to the basics tool . . . to help navigate the uncharted waters of this upcoming year . . . We don’t know what to expect, just that there’ll be a whole lot of learning involved.” Check out the pics of the event and find links to W+K 12 online below.

Everything’s better with blowtorches. Donuts by Donutorama.

Twenty six placards lined the walkway, each detailing a different element, motto or dream for this year’s W+K12 program.

X marks the spot.

Find W+K 12.8 online on Twitter (@wk12), Instagram (@wk12point8) and online at wk12.tumblr.com.

If the answer is yes, go here: http://iworkedatwk.com

Spread the word.