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.”

So far, the group has done well for itself. Its clientele is split between New York and Philadelphia, with local clients like Print Liberation and the Paines Park Project and larger clients like Reebok and well-known Philadelphia based jazz musician Melody Gardot.
The firm recently launched a new version of Gardot’s official Universal Records site.
Though it utilizes a snazzy Flash-based feature on the musician’s landing page, because of Gardot’s international audience, its foundation is on standards-based development.
“We’re really known for our large, heavy Flash experiences, but because [Gardot] is more popular around the world than in the U.S., we had to make sure it was a more standard space and usable on mobile platforms,” Burrowbridge says.
The firm also recently designed a site for Weathervane Music and WXPN’s Shaking Through music and video showcase, which lets users watch recording sessions of selected artists. It’s another example of WellFed’s standards design flexibility.
Yet, a quick look at WellFed’s portfolio could tell you that Flash is its bread and butter. The Flash element on Gardot’s page—which shows dynamic “bubbles” coming from a illustrated bathtub [pictured above]—is impressive in its own right. The elements are dynamically generated by an embedded music player. Burrowbridge says that WellFed completed a heavy analysis of her songs to create a less static experience compared with a more standard looping animation.
When we followed-up with WellFed in late April, Flash was all over the news. And in trouble.
In a public statement, Steve Jobs slammed Adobe’s proprietary media platform, stating his reasoning for dropping it from future mobile Apple products. Flash has issues with reliability, security, performance, battery life and mobile platforms, he wrote.
“Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind,” Jobs concluded in the lengthy letter. There was no doubt that Apple—which owns a huge share of the mobile conversation—was moving ahead without Adobe.
So, how does this larger-picture decision weigh on small design firms like WellFed who, though versatile, lean heavily on Flash for production?
“We actually talk about this on a weekly basis,” Vipond says. “There’s not a lot of systems out there to deliver the type of experience that Flash does. I don’t think we’re going to move completely away from it.”
“We certainly are paying attention to HTML5 and CSS3. It’s what we do. When there’s new technologies out there, we try to stay on the front of the wave and not the back,” he says.
And a big wave it is.