We’re proud to be sponsors of Verselandia!, a Portland Public Schools city-wide high school poetry slam presented by Literary Arts. This year’s event, their second, took place April 30 at the Wonder Ballroom, with national slam champion Anis Mojgani as the MC.

Participating high schools conducted their own poetry slams and the top three finalists from each of the 10 schools competed against each other at Verselandia! for big prizes, including a new MacBook, iPads and gift certificates.

This year’s winners:
1st: Micah Fletcher, Madison High
2nd: Ke’Shayla Brown, Metropolitan Learning Center
3rd: Jess Faunt, Cleveland High
4th: Sydney Oliver, Grant High
5th: Lauren Steele, Jefferson High

Read some of the press about this year’s events in Portland Monthly Magazine and the Oregonian.

Listen to their interview here.

Check out more photos from their visit to the agency on our Facebook page.

All photos courtesy Literary Arts.

W+K: Where are you from, originally?
Jing Jin: I’m from Shanghai. Well, I was born in Xin Jiang province, near Russia, and moved to Shanghai when I was 5 years old. I love it there; it’s well-developed and modern.

Q: How did you come to find W+K Shanghai?
A: I was contacted via LinkedIn. At the time I was looking for opportunities, so when this came up I decided to try it out and see what the company was like. I’d already heard of Wieden from my time working in the advertising industry, and it had a great reputation in the market. And when I talked to everyone during my interview process, I found it really attractive–the unique culture, and how it’s small and independent.

Q: Have you ever visited the US before?
A: No, it’s my first time. I love Portland. The weather is beautiful here–everyone says I brought the sunshine with me. It’s also very convenient. If you want to buy something, you can just walk there and get it–in Shanghai, you have to take taxis everywhere. To find a restaurant, to go shopping, everything. And the traffic is terrible.

Q: What do you like to do in your spare time?
A: Traveling is my hobby, and I love to spend time with my daughter, who’s 12 years old. She’s lovely. Sometimes during the weekend I need to take her to school–this is typical for Chinese children–they don’t have free time during the weekends, poor things. She takes piano, English and math lessons during the weekend. I also like to watch movies, like the Avengers and the other Marvel Comics films.

Q: Speaking of super heroes: if you could have any super power, what would it be?
A: I think I would want to be able to change anything to be clean, immediately. Like if I touch dirty water, it would be clean, just like that.

Q: What are your hopes for working in the Shanghai office as its new HR and Admin Director?
A: I hope that the W+K culture will never be changed. The company is unique because of its core values. So I hope that we can keep maintaining that. And I also hope that we can win lots of pitches and have great business opportunities, of course. I would love to attract great talents and make a really strong team.

Thanks, Jing, and welcome to W+K.

Visit W+K Shanghai’s blog and check out their recent work.

Max’s person, Becca, says that he’s always hungry for attention.

“He’s a space invader,” she said. “He likes to be really close. He loves people.”

Becca and her husband aren’t quite sure what breeds make up Max’s DNA, so they eventually settled on “red-tailed, Kentucky lickin’ dog.”

“He was a rescue,” Becca said. “We got him from a farm in Berea, Kentucky called Lisa’s Lil’ Buddies. He was on puppy death row. This woman Lisa saves all those dogs and takes them to this magical farm, and that’s where he came from.”

They found Max online, but didn’t have much information about him.

“The description was, ‘Max is a baby doll,’” Becca said. “That’s all it said. He came with his name.”

Since then, the family has moved around the country a few times, but Max doesn’t mind the change of scenery.

“Max loves road trips,” Becca said. “He’s gone through almost every US state. He really likes the woods, so he loves it in Portland. He was in Texas most of his life, and he doesn’t know how to swim–the water scares him.”

And that’s not the only thing that scares him, according to his owner: “He’s really afraid of things that look like they should be alive–like those big rabbits people put in their yards on Easter, or the blow-up Santa Clauses. If we’re out on a walk and he sees one, he’ll freeze up.”

Max is a big fan of walks, too, but not just for the fresh air.

“When he was a puppy he wouldn’t go on a walk without a toy in his mouth. He loves little stuffed animals,” Becca said. “He had a little buffalo he carried around for a long time. He’d parade up and down South Congress in Austin with the buffalo or his toy octopus, which looked ridiculous. All the neighbors knew him and would talk to him. He does it for attention; he knows exactly how to get it.”

Max’s family portrait, by Sara Pulver

Even though he’s living in Portland, Max is a Texas dog at heart.

“He likes to eat June bugs,” Becca said. “I don’t know if they have them here, but anyone from Texas will know what I’m talking about.”

But the most Texas thing about Max? The endorsements he’s received.

“One morning, my husband went to get coffee at Joe’s Coffee on South Congress in Austin, where Friday Night Lights was filmed,” Becca said. “He saw Kyle Chandler, who plays this character we love, there. He looks down and goes, ‘That’s a good lookin’ dawg.’ That’s the coolest thing about Max: Coach Taylor loves him.”

Hearty, heartfelt congratulations to Phil Knight on his induction into the 64th Advertising Hall of Fame!

Doors – 6pm
Performance/Sermon/Inititaion – 7:30pm
Ski masks are the recommend attire for the evening.
Beer & Wolfsnacks provided.

Who are the Manwolfs anyway?

The Manwolfs were once a rare and diminishing breed of waywardly inclined human men but ever since their appearance in the cult film classic Machotaildrop their numbers seem to be on the increase. Small pockets of these ungodly fellows have been appearing across the planet in various forms, spreading their infectious gang laden ways on to the next batch of unsuspecting civilians who are taking up the reigns of their vague but noble cause.

The links below reflect some of the key moments in the Manwolfs rise to prominence. See you Thursday.

Machotaildrop Trailer
Es Shoes – Kick to Kill Commercial
Mister Heavenly “Bronx Sniper” Music Video

There’s more.

The countdown to May 2nd, and whatever it will bring to our foyer, continues…

When Charlie Kawasaki approached W+K Tomorrow, he had an extensive tech and startup background, and a new product: a station where a person could buy rechargeable batteries, swap them out for new ones to avoid the hassle of charging at home, and recycle old alkaline batteries. But that product needed more than just a new logo–it needed an entire new identity, starting with its name.

The original concept for the rechargeable battery stations.

“It was originally called ‘Greenbatz’,” said Wendy Martenson. “The first thing Charlie wanted was to create an illustrated green bat, and that was it. But we started talking about it more, and it turned out that he had many more needs, and that we could meet them by partnering with Tomorrow to bring it to life.”

Studio has produced other brand identities and logos, including work for startups from the Portland Incubator Experiment (PIE). But because they were brought in at the beginning of the Bettery project, they found that they could be involved with every element of the product’s production, even before it went into the manufacturing stage.

“It’s very different from our other projects because it’s very long term,” Martenson said. “Most projects are only a few months long.”

Three potential logo designs and colorways.

The final Bettery logo.

Studio began with a list of names, which they narrowed down to three contenders; the team eventually settled on “Bettery”, a portmanteau of “better” and “battery”. They also produced several potential brand identities and logos.

“The manufacturing process takes a while,” Martenson said. “Over the year and a half, we had a chance to see the brand through its packaging and product design, the kiosks, even the interface for the kiosk itself. We partnered with our motion design team to create animations for it. It’s very exciting to be able to bring a brand to life in that way, and to touch it on all of those levels.”

“It was a great learning experience for us,” Martenson said. “This has all happened organically; we have great designers and it gives them new challenges, and opportunities to work in a different capacity. We hope we’ve given Bettery the tools to be successful, to stand out and be different.”

For more information about Bettery, visit betteryinc.com. If you’re in the Portland or Seattle area, you can check out the swap stations at select Whole Foods locations.

This mysterious sigil appeared on a wall in our foyer this week; what could it mean?

We can only wait, and watch.

WK recently allowed me some time to tackle a problem that plagues workers everywhere whether they are working in advertising or some other job that involves a lot of email typing. I’m talking about the problem of not being able to devote enough time practicing shredding the guitar. The solution of hooking a guitar up so that you could use it like a computer keyboard had been in my head for a few years and it was a real joy to get to follow through on it.

Learn about it from this video:

For anyone who would like to build their own Email Guitar I’ll show you some more on a few of my favorite parts of the project.

Here’s the plan I made before I started working on it. I ended up staying true to this plan.

Here’s the optoisolator circuit I used. Getting this thing to work was the hardest part of the project. A few other plans I found for this circuit didn’t work. I even bought a MIDI shield in desperation, and it didn’t work at all.

Here is the design for the relay board and the relay board itself with a couple components attached. It was the first time I’ve had a PCB board printed, and I was happy not to have screwed up so bad I had to scrap it and start all over.

In order to make the relay make the right connections on the keyboard brains, I had to map out the connections made on the keyboard. These are the layers in a keyboard that the relays are taking the place of. I color coded them to make them easier to follow.

Once I got all that working correctly it was time to program the arduino. That was a lot of work but it was pretty straightforward. Here is a link to the code I used.

Hopefully soon workplaces will be filled with the tones of badass guitars instead of boring key click noises!

See more of Neevel’s projects at his personal site, DavidNeevel.com.

Wieden+Kennedy employees have a particular knack for arriving in advertising via the road less travelled. Among your co-workers you might find former professional atheletes, restauranteurs, journalists or janitors. Art Director Ken Meyer is, I’m fairly certain, the only former professional Zamboni driver in the Wieden network. Before he was kerning in the WK Studio, Ken was smoothing out the rough edges for the Golden Flashes at the Kent State Ice Arena in Kent, OH.

On Friday March 22, Ken stepped back into the rink and took the Portland Winterhawks’ “Fanboni” for a spin on Night One of Season Playoffs at the Portland Rose Garden. Getting Ken reunited with his lost love, the ice resurfacer, began as a “what if” and tuned into a “what the?” thanks to a few tenacious co-workers and the wonderfully warm and kind folks at the Winterhawks.

A handful of co-workers and their offspring joined Ken and his wife Janice and of course Tom-A-Hawk, the beloved Winterhawks mascot. We’re learned that Ken was the first civilian allowed to operate the Fanboni, and we believe that exception was made because he learned to drive in Ohio, not Portland.