Platform season two is upon us! We are seeking talent to take part in Wieden + Kennedy London’s Research & Development lab experiment.

Platform season two is upon us! We are seeking
talent to take part in Wieden + Kennedy London's Research & Development lab
experiment.

We are looking for people from technology and
anthropological backgrounds. The aim of their work will be to provide W+K and
our clients with new ways for brands to engage and interact with people in the
future.
We need super-smart people who are keen to explore the future through themes
such as play, sustainability, mobile and story-telling. They will need to be proven in their specialist
field, and be free for a minimum of 3 months, up to a maximum of 9 months, to
work on multiple projects.The specific areas of skills we are looking for include physical computing,
social media, augmented reality, gaming and interaction design. NB: we're not
looking for budding designers, art directors or copywriters as part of this
initiative.
There is no deadline for entries, as we are
running a rolling recruitment program. However, we are ready to start, so if
you apply now you have a better chance of getting in.

Here’s
the deal: £350 per week, space in our office, royalty share of profit for
successful ideas and a link
to W+K's worldwide creative network. All candidates will need
to be resident
in the EU or have a valid work visa for the UK. Apply now by sending your portfolio to
[email protected], or contact her for further info.

We’d also like you to send an outline of
an R&D project that you’d like to carry out at W+K Platform.

For more info on Platform and to see some of what happened in season one, have a look at the Platform blog.

It's not all just drinking beer and sleeping on the terrace.

Last week we were lucky enough to have the talented Stewart Smith in to give an inspiring talk on code play. Stewart is an artist / programmer from New York who currently operates a consultancy in London called Stewdio.

Donna writes:

Last week we were lucky enough to have the talented Stewart Smith in
to give an inspiring talk on code play. Stewart is an artist / programmer from New
York who currently operates a consultancy in London called Stewdio. Stewdio approaches art and software through the lens of graphic design.

He has a real enthusiasm for playing with digital tools; not
just making things for clients, but following through on ideas that come out of
play and experimentation.

One project Stewart spoke about was Windmaker. This is an
ambient weather widget which applies the current wind conditions to (almost)
any Web site.

It uses United States ZIP code to grab local conditions from
the Yahoo! Weather RSS feed. It then breaks down a Web site into individual pieces
such as text blocks and images. Finally, WindMaker sets the pieces in motion
according to the strength of the wind.

See it in action here:

WindMaker from Stewdio on Vimeo.

http://stewdio.org/windmaker/

Take a look at some of his work on his website below:

http://stewdio.org/

And watch windmaker in action on wklondon.com here.

Brilliant stuff.

Thanks for coming in, Stewart.