Zivtech, Old City Drupal shop, hires half of Canary Promotions + Design

Old City Drupal and Alfresco design and application shop Zivtech announced today they’ve hired the co-founder of a smaller, competing, if friendly, design firm.

Mason Wendell, whose cultural website work we profiled in March, will take on the creative director role at Zivtech’s new design department, leaving his post as principal designer at Canary Promotions + Design. Wendell founded the firm in 2001 with his wife Megan Wendell.

It’s an amicable divorce on the professional side, as Wendell the fairer will maintain the publicity side of Canary Promotions and, so far as has been disclosed, marital bliss remains in place.

Wendell of Zivtech is a leader in the region’s Drupal community, as a co-organizer of Drupaldelphia, an event that was led with Zivtech co-partner Alex Urevick-Ackelsberg, who has also had a prominent hand with his brother in the Young Philly Politics blog community. Wendell’s Drupal background and design focus made it an important hire, Urevick-Ackelsberg told Technically Philly.

For one more intersection, take note that Urevick-Ackelsberg’s fellow partner Jody Hamilton formerly worked for Canary, which was once based in Mount Airy but moved to Glenside, Montgomery County in May.

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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