Shop Talk: interactive design studio WellFed rides the Flash wave

Updated, 5/13, 4:11 p.m.: Added Partner Gavin Potts details.

At interactive design firm WellFed‘s office space at 2424 Studios on York Street in Fishtown, on a cold, late winter day, the firm’s excitable puppy, Bella, runs from desk to desk.

Founded by Wick Vipond, Ty Burrowbridge and Gavin Potts—who got their start at agencies like Red Tettemer and 1 Trick Pony—WellFed, which opened earlier this year, is a friendly place for Bella, who huffs up and down the steps of the two-floor loft to visit a handful of employees and interns, like partner and technology lead Gavin Potts.

Unlike the larger agencies where the founders got their start, Vipond, 30, says that WellFed’s small team that gives them an advantage.

“We’re small, lean and able to be more efficient,” he says, his hair curiously gray for his age. “This year will be interesting. It’s our first full year where we’ve been a brick and mortar shop.”

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Mason and Megan Wendell: from indie record execs to husband-wife branding and design Drupal team

Seems like ditching the record label for the branding and design firm was the right way to go.

Mason and Megan Wendell, the husband-wife team behind Mount Airy-based Canary Promotion + Design, met at the Berklee College of Music in Boston.

“We started our own record label (Solarmanite Records) to release our own music and some other artists, and more and more bands started coming to us for advice on everything from how to publicize a release to how to get a barcode,” says Megan, 35, who handles the marketing side of the firm.

So they started a business doing just that outside of New York City, where she was working for a dotcom and Mason was handling Web work on Wall Street. By early 2002, the duo moved to Philadelphia and found a niche in the region’s arts and culture community.

Now they have a heavy hand in the look and feel of the Philly arts scene and open source content management system Drupal is their tool of choice.

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Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corp. launches brand new VisitPhilly.com

Update here

The Philadelphia region’s most powerful cheerleader will unveil a sleek new Web presence and re-branding effort today.

At a Center City hotel this morning, the primary online home of the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corp. will be recast as VisitPhilly.com, which is dominated by big photos and better integration of other content. This fifth redesign for GPTMC is also their first step away from their 13-year-old GoPhila.com. GoPhila.com now redirects to VisitPhilly.com.

The new design, led by Web design firm Happy Cog East with offices in Center City, features a cleaner navigation with more interactive drop-down bars, a trend in development moving away from the more cluttered, screen-wide top navigation bar the last iteration GPTMC had.

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Our City of Philadelphia logo design contest winner: Sara DeMarco

Click to enlarge

It turns out the Liberty Bell doesn’t have to be lame.

After the city’s new logo — featuring that cracked ringer — was blasted and we issued a challenge for submissions that were better, we didn’t expect much to come the way of Independence Mall’s most famous attraction.

But more than one of the submissions did, including the eventual winner: Sara DeMarco, as voted on by you in comments and tweets. As depicted above, she submitted how an array of citywide departments could get their own design, while conforming to a general theme. (We’ll be drinking to Sara at our meetup tomorrow)

Great thanks to all our submissions, particularly our two other finalists, RJ White with ‘the Richardson Dilworth‘ and Larry West with ‘Birthplace.’

Below, we remind Sara what she won and again share her example of how the mayor’s office stationary might look like with her design.

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City of Philadelphia design contest submissions

Many of you joined in the criticism over the city’s new logo.

We figured that if it was that bad, our community could put together in five days of a holiday week a slew of better choices. So we challenged you. Others put out the word until last night, when we closed the door.

We at Technically Philly narrowed down the submissions to what we’re calling our top three.  Now it’s up to you by way of a day’s voting.

We’ll count each tweet and comment as a vote. By 5 p.m., we’ll close the polls, as it were, and hire an overpriced accounting firm to audit the tally. Or just count ourselves. Oh, and we absolutely encourage politicking.

Wednesday morning, we’ll announce the winner.

Thanks to everyone who submitted! We hope you’ll see more of these contests — with better prizes to boot. For now, check out the three finalists below and let us know which is your favorite.

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Ten Philadelphia Web sites then and now

Web designer in 1999

As the first decade of the 21st century closes, the Internet continues to change everything it touches.

Ten years ago, the Web was still working its way into everyday life of everyday people in Philadelphia. Now, it’s finding even more crevices of existence to transform. So, using the Internet Archive, we thought it might be a hoot to look back at the Web sites from ten Philadelphia technology institutions from the end of 1999.

It’s another in our completely irregular Top Ten Tuesday department.

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Submit your logos for the City of Philadelphia

We asked, many of you responded so we now offer up the challenge.

Corporate branding Web site Brand New called a new design for the City of Philadelphia one of the year’s worst.

In the spirit of the new year and because we know you don’t want to do any real work this week, we put an open call out to the designers and developers and tinkerers and artists in our community. Make a designer’s design for the City of Philadelphia.

Submit your ideas for a logo that would better suit the City of Philadelphia — yes, it can be sarcastic or heartfelt. It can even include the Liberty Bell or a cheesesteak if you think they sum Philly up well … and you can endure the taunts of your peers. We’re thinking standard display images, but we won’t begin to limit you, the audience. If it fits in an e-mail or can be linked to, we want to see them.

All submissions need to be sent to info [at] technicallyphilly.com [files or links] by the final whistle of this Sunday’s 4:15 p.m. Eagles last regular season game, against those bastard Cowboys.

The best design — to be decided by an incredibly complex algorithm that combines RTing, commenting and how surly reporter Brian James Kirk feels that morning — will win an incredibly disappointing prize package featuring the following:

• Pride in winning TP’s first hastily thrown together contest (maybe we’ll even design you a button… maybe)
• One cold, tasty local beer purchased and served to you by the TP staff at our next meetup, to be announced shortly
• A promise that we’ll submit your idea to the appropriate persons at City Hall… if they would only take us off hold.

bluecadet interactive’s Josh Goldblum wins Emmy

A Web-based multimedia package on living with AIDS in Jamaica is not done winning awards for the firm that designed it.

Josh Goldblum, founder of the Art Museum area’s bluecadet interactive, won a News & Documentary Emmy last week for his work as interactive producer on the project, called Live Hope Love.

The project, which combines photography, video documentation, poerty and interviews with the victims of AIDS, began in 2007 with a request from the Virginia Quarterly and became a broad partnership between the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, D.C.-based Joshua Cogan and South Carolina poet, activist and Jamaican native Kwame Dawes.

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