We’ve just launched our latest website for a pair of young architects, North Street Design, and we’re really excited about it. We’ve looked at a LOT of architect’s websites while we’ve been designing and developing Juliet and Gavin’s site and we’ve been struck by how ubiquitous the use of Flash is for homepages. There’s nothing more annoying than landing on that often overly-animated Flash-driven page on a non-entertainment, business site and have to wait while it loads, plays and finally gives us the chance to get out of it and on to the information we want!

And then we recently saw the stats about Apple iOS device use worldwide: 125 million iPhones and iPads have been sold in the last couple of years. Another great argument for staying far away from Flash on architects’ sites – or anybody else’s for that matter. No business wants to leave that many potential clients unaware of their work.

The North Street Design site, like the architects’ own terrific design aesthetic, is clean, contemporary, and literally, well… tactile. Their design practice not only focuses on new construction, renovation and adaptive use, but also sustainable technology in building environments, like rainwater harvesting systems. Appropriately, images of ground textures – stone, plants, water – infuse all their graphic branding tools, as we’ve designed business cards, social media and related materials to seamlessly integrate with the website.

Gavin and Juliet and their North Street Design practice are on the front edge of creative, sustainable and beautiful design, and TDG is pleased to have helped them create a website and related materials that the world will appreciate. Including those 125 million iOS users.

Marc speaks with Dr. Carolyne Johnson at the Teens Take Control and Philadelphia Freedom Condom Launch

We’ve just walked back to the TDG office from the always-spectacular Mayors Reception Room at historic Philadelphia City Hall, where Mayor Michael Nutter launched the Philadelphia Freedom Condom. This is a key part of the campaign we designed for the Philadelphia Department of Public Health – Take Control Philly (http://www.takecontrolphilly.org) – aimed at teaching sexual safety to high-risk teens. We have designed the web, print and social elements of the campaign so far, with radio and print ads and lots of other material yet to come. We’ve been working with the Health Department’s developer on the website and enjoying the collaboration with him and all the great people at the Department of Public Health.

TDG’s commitment to our community and our city is really getting energized on this project. Teens aged 11 – 19 in Philadelphia are at frighteningly high risk, compared to lots of other major cities, for the whole range of STDs, from gonorrhea to HIV-AIDS. So we are honored to have been selected to partner with the city on the project. Federal funds are underwriting much of the cost, which includes the one million uniquely branded free condoms the Health Department intends to give out through the website we’ve designed plus the other outlets that the site’s mapping feature (?) points to.

Our design process for creating the graphic images for the campaign included an online survey and in-person focus group among local teenagers to get their reactions to and ideas about Zelda, our spokesperson for Take Control Philly. Zelda is going to have a lot to say in the coming months, and we wanted to be sure she was a voice that young people would be willing to hear. So far the reaction has been great, and the first online order for condoms came 15 minutes after the site launched this morning. What a great feeling, knowing our work is stimulating education, discussion and most importantly action on this really important issue.