welcome to optimism

Milk Teeth

This week kids, Mel and Anna show you how to make a big set of teeth

Spoke too soon!

Ignore WKside 4's last post. Put the champagne back on ice and the cake back in the... cake container. The concept has become so amazingly fantastic that it can't possibly fit in the window by monday. We'll keep you posted as to the actual date - but trust us, it'll be worth it. Oh yes.

In the meantime, here is some lego for you.

(We didn't do this, but if you would like to see where we ffffound it, go here. The siders recommend it highly.)

New window display up monday!

Hey dudes, Luke from the WKsiders here. We've been mad busy of late, hence our lack of correspondence on this here blogosphere. One of our babies, in the form of the new WK window display, will going up on monday. It will probably be complete in the afternoon, so meet you all there at about 4pm, yeah?

WKside struck down by illness!

We're 50% ill! The glass is half ill! We're wieden's ill-est! Super ill!

But Anna and Luke soldier on, dealing our lack of ill-ness as best we can.

"CIDER" anyone

So we’ve landed. Hello people. Salutations, one and all.

With a grand old age of 110 (collectively), we are officially the new bumper value lot of WKSiders - here to get in the mix and hopefully add a certain tangy fizz to life at Wiedens. Tasty.

Hick

Thus far it’s been about a week of orientation and getting to know the inner-workings of the big WK; The well stocked cupboards, meetings galore, lots of lovely people, where the toilets are.

For Swedish Dom, his time also included the sheer joys of getting to grips with London transport, moving in and IKEA (hang on a second!). More crucially (to us anyway), Dom has also had the all-important inductions to fine British institutions such as Nandos and Marmite.

On the subject of Dom. We’d like to add that his vocab is ever expanding by the day:

“Guff” “Gunge” “Splurge” “Knackard” “Cor Blimey!” “The long and short of it”

(Essential additions, we’re sure you’ll all agree)

A quick nostalgic look at Noels House Party circa '92 pretty much covered both gunge, splurge and cor blimey in one go.

Last but by no means least! We have also been set our first few briefs. Exciting stuff. These include the WK window and ways in which to detract pesky parkers from pinching the sacred wk moped spaces outiside WK headquarters. All are pleased to have such meaty first projects to sink all 138 gnashers into.

We are also working on a few other bits and bobs of our very own. So watch this space. Here's a sneak preview...

New WK Side

WK Side is our scheme that brings in four people from outside the world of advertising for 3 months to work at W+K London. They learn from us and hopefully we learn from them. We've just hatched a fresh batch. Here's what they say:

Hello, everyone, we're the new WK Siders and we eagerly look forward to
meeting, working and playing with you all! (That's everyone at W+K rather than everyone reading the blog. Which would be impractical.)

Mel

Eyup. I'm Mel, a cheeky and mischievous Yorkshire lass with a penchant for Haribo, Coronation Street, mashed potato, Woody Allen and Jammie Dodgers. I have lived round these parts for two and a half years and recently completed my MA at the Royal College of Art (Communication Art & Design) where I use a
combination of wit, wisdom (well, sort of), words, irony and images in order to gently mock myself and the world that surrounds me. Come along and say 'hello'. Be nice though, I'm quite soft for a Northerner!

Anna

Hi folks,
My name is Anna. I hail from Bristol (via Hong Kong) but have been living in these parts for some time now after studying photography at Brighton. I have just come from a company called yellowdoor where I was an art director/jack of all trades-er doing creative consultancy, strategic planning, instore/window design, trends forecasting, events, and other unusual goings-on for fashion brands. Which was good fun. I was also involved in the making of a magazine called Rubbish earlier in the year. (Vogue meets the Beano).

I love a mean game of Balderdash, help run a disco/electro/techno night in Dalston, used to be addicted to crisps, enjoy all things fancy dress and can oft be found joyfully wallowing in jumble sales or car booting in Tooting. I look forward to meeting many of you soon.

Dominik

Hello my name is Dominik. I am from Sweden. Although my parents were born in Poland, that doesn't make me Polish, according to my passport. Fed up with the terrible and cold darkness of Swedish winters, they had the family emigrate to southern France. Later on I lived in Hawaii for two years, where I pretended to study whilst surfing. Hence you may address me in any of the languages spoken in the above mentioned countries, and it will be understood.

Luke

Hey, I'm Luke. I was born in Kent in 1985. I went to Ravensbourne and did a BA in product design until 2006. I then lived and worked in New York doing product design until early 2007. It was amazing. However, that was the year I realised I might not want to do straight product design after all. (It was
also the same year I stumbled across the WK London site.) I came back and started doing freelance graphics-based projects for small companies and start-ups. One weekend, a particularly small-minded client pushed me to breaking point. The next monday I was sitting outside WK London on a
turquoise verner panton. After many emails and a couple of great meetings, here I am, embracing failure. How are you?

We were asked to stay for another month.

Because we are tied to a project. Look at our big smiles.

A star is ballooned.

Our very own Edd Hopkinson has become the centrefold on the flickr page of Dave Gorman. All it took him to get a myriad of comments was to simply hold an Emeco 20-06 chair attached to a balloon and, oh yeah, wear a questionable helmet.

WKside week 5 and 1 day or so.

So you haven't heard from us for quite some time. That's not because we don't like you, are lazy, don't care about the internet or whatsoever, but we've been through hard times. Very hard times indeed. Especially now as Edd is trying to type this on Seb's German layout keyboard. Nearly everything we touched blew up, burst, ran out of gas (or to be more precise: helium), began to stink horribly or got deleted by our own stupidity (or to be more precise, Seb's). Edd has given up typing now. He doesn't like German keyboards. Nonetheless we had 3 exciting weeks. We got to meet new, great people. Like Joel who flew his way from Portland via Amsterdam to our lovely London office. Joel is one of the graduates of WK12 (link goes here) that is similar to WKside, only they work inside Wieden's for 12 months and are more of an agency inside the agency. You can see some films the 12 did during their time at the Portland office here and have a look at the WK12 home on the web here. Joel is a great and lovely chap, not only because he provided some fine brew from Portland.

Joel outside the Golden Heart.

After being at Wieden's for 2 weeks we thought it would be a nice idea to get the bunch here to know more about us four. So we bought lots of balloons, filled them with numerous abnormal secrets and embarassing facts and pinned them on the wall of a disused meeting room on the 3rd floor.

Lovely jubbly?

No orange? No orange.

Ready to pop.

Well, what can we say...actually only 5 or 6 people had the time to pop one balloon of our Shh.. before over night the cleaners took them away. Probably thinking it was a leftover of a white balloon party or something. So here are the secrets that never got revealled due to some kind of cleaning obsession:

Kelly is scared of her own cat
Kellys nana is in a tap group called The Super Troopers
Kelly met her boyfriend on a train
Kelly always has wet feet because she has a huge hole in the sole of her shoe!
Sarah has size nine feet, but they're very thin and elegant.
Sarah was the Watford & District 800m champion 3 years in a row.
Sarah has a large collection of wigs.
Sarah was a young Lib Dem supporter. When she was little she loved the sound of the name Paddy Ashdown and ran around shouting it in public.
Edd nearly shot his friend Kris through the eye with an arrow by mistake.
A policewoman once mistook Edd for a 13-year-old boy she was chasing. (Edd was 23 at the time).
Edd spent a good hour running around a Norwegian town in his undergarments just for the hell of it.
Edd first got drunk at the age of 2.
Seb was a dancer in a Latin dance formation in some German Dancing Division.
Seb was shadowed by the secret police of the German Democratic Republic on his way to school.
Seb for one time was a model at a local wedding fashion show.
Seb, when a kid, once stole a Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles action figure from a shop but because of his bad conscience returned it secretly on the next day.

Don't try this at home.

Also we are still working on our Christmas briefs. As part of one idea we started a food fight outside the agency. Christmas Pudding Pals vs. Chocolate Sponge Squad. Who will be victorious? Just relax and enjoy.

Chocolate Sponge vs. Christmas Pudding

Another idea is all about wrapping. That's why the WKside area looked like a service desk at Marks&Spencers during Christmas season. If you're wondering about next years trend in fashion and accessories, we think it will be blue wrappings.

Furthermore we have been trying to do a film for Emeco. It features a balloon and a chair and realy hasn't been as easy as we thought it would be. One burst balloon, two burst balloons, a new balloon with not enough helium and a third burst balloon later, not to mention numerous takes under Kelly's savagely meticulous direction and we are finally in the edit suite. Here you can see some random pictures from our filming action featuring Edd Hopkinson as the eloquent presenter from Saffron Walden.

Pump up the jam.

What the fuzz?

From absolute craziness to concentrated camera adjustment.

What's that smell?

The director is satisfied.

Thanks for your time and hopefully we'll manage to keep you up with bits and pieces out of the world at Wieden's more often.

The Big Boom Bang Balloon Burst Bonanza.

Next time watch out for sharp street signs, idiots!

We started to film and exhibit the emeco 20-06 chair with 2 shiny white balloons. During filming one got killed by a street sign. The other didn't survive the tent exhibition. So a third one arrived in a small parcel from the US. Well, it endured a whole weekend with a small hole (that got taped on Friday night) but was killed by a street sign as well. Luckily after finishing the shot. Unfortunately he took his revenge.

The Return of the Giant Killer Bubbles.