Fantasy Interactive

Fantasy
Industry Digital UX and design
Founded Stockholm, Sweden (1999 (1999))
Founder David Martin
Headquarters
Services
Number of employees
 30+
Website www.fantasy.co



Fantasy is a human-centered design agency that combines digital strategy, UX and design to help clients think beyond ordinary. Fantasy has offices in New York and San Francisco.

Fantasy has approximately 30 employees in the United States. Its staff consists of strategists, UX and UI designers, producers, user-experience experts, business and marketing professionals and freelance consultants. Fantasy's extensive client list includes Android, AOL, AT&T, Atari, BBC, Burton, CBS, Citi Bank, Coca-Cola, Desigual, DIRECTV, Disney, Ducati, EA, Evite, Fidelity, Fineco, Ford, FOX, Google, HTC, IKEA, Intel, Land Rover, LG, Microsoft, MTV, National Geographic, NBC, Nickelodeon, Nintendo, Nordstrom, Pfizer, Porsche, Redbull, SAS, Sony, Time Warner Cable, Toyota, USA TODAY, Verizon, Vodafone, Wacom and Xbox.

History

The company's CEO and founder, David Martin, is of Irish descent but was a resident of Sweden for five years. In 1999 he began designing for the Internet from a garage in Söderfors, Sweden. In 2000 he opened an internet cafe in Tierp, where he started a web design company called Dolphin Ocean. In 2001 Dolphin Ocean changed its name to Fantasy Interfaces and moved to Uppsala, closer to the capital city of Stockholm, where they shared an office with a gaming company called Starbreeze Studios. Just four people strong at the time, Fi designed and developed the Starbreeze website which won The Favourite Website Awards Site of the Year award in 2001.[1]

Fi moved to Stockholm in 2002, and gained Road Runner and Xbox as clients. The company dropped "Interfaces" from its name and became Fantasy Interactive. Fantasy Interactive rewrote Road Runner's website, which secured them a second FWA Site of the Year.[2] After their second award, Fi began to obtain more clients, including Ford and AOL. The company slowly grew in Stockholm to accommodate the demand from new clients leading Fi staff to travel to the US every two months to stay close to their US-based clientele. Fi opened an office in New York City on July 27, 2005.[3]

In 2006, the Swedish newspaper Dagens Industri awarded Fi its "Super Gazelle" prize for the fastest organically growing company in Sweden. DI noted that Fi was seen in the US as a Swedish company, despite being little-known in Sweden.[4][5]

In 2007, Imagine Publishing listed Fi in their list of the 21 Most Inspiring Companies[6] which included Apple, Pixar, Porsche, eBay, Sky, Google and DreamWorks. Later that year, the agency was the first company inducted into the FWA Hall of Fame.[7]

That same year, through its subsidiary Contain LLC, Fi launched a new social media platform called Contain. The platform is used today by Burton Snowboards, Ducati, Porsche and the Irish Government.

In 2010, Fi became the global digital agency of record for HTC.[8]

In April 2011, the agency announced it was opening a fourth office in San Francisco to serve its West Coast clientele such as Google, Sony and Electronic Arts. As of 2013, Fi's global offices are located in London, New York City, San Francisco and Stockholm.

In September 2012, Fi unveiled one of the company's most significant client milestones with the launch of USA Today's redesigned website. The work was a year-long collaboration with Gannett and has received positive acclaim with critics describing it as "impressive" and "unprecedented".[9] Industry press like .net Magazine [10] and Web Designer Magazine [11] covered the work for USA Today as use case studies.

In early 2013, Fi debuted other work including Microsoft and IE10's Explore Touch, an HTML5 site that let consumers use touch gesture to mix audio files and create custom sound tracks with the swipe of their fingers.[12] The Nick iOS app for the client Nickelodeon also launched to much fanfare and quickly ranked as the #1 free entertainment app on iPad.[13] The press described it as a "game changer in the kids' TV world."[14]

The latest case study released by Fi is a pro-active exercise that explores the future of the airline website. The experiment has been featured in .Net magazine.[15] Wired,[16] Creative Bloq,[17] Design Taxi,[18] and Adverblog.[19]

In 2013 Fantasy shut down its production office in Stockholm and focused on serving its clients from its United States-based locations. Fantasy discontinued providing technology services in-house and centered its services around Strategy, UX and visual design for products and web.

In 2014 Fantasy hired UX & Strategy director Peter Smart. Former Director of Technology and Business Director Firdosh Tangri took over running the NY location. The San Francisco office drove the Google Partners product for Google and established the following new clients:

In 2015 Fi rebranded to Fantasy and acquired the Fantasy.co domain name. They are nominated for Agency of The Year by .net Magazine. Fantasy acquired the following clients in 2015:

Technical skills

In 2001, Fi introduced the first Flash-based 3D-like interaction[20] used in the website for Fido Film. The same website also introduced progressive loading in a Flash-based website in which its function proactively loaded swf files into the browser cache to minimize load experience time for the user.[21]

Fi claim that in 2003 they introduced the concept of dynamic deep linking, which served as the foundation for the Road Runner portal which won the FWA Site of the Year and later placed second in the FWA Site of the Decade list.[22]

Interviewed in 2005, David Martin confidently promoted the use of Flash multimedia software, claiming that Fi's Flash websites ran faster than HTML.[23]

In 2010 together with Google, Fi launched a variety of HTML5-driven websites including the award-winning 20thingsilearned.com.[24]

As of 2013 Fi has moved away from Flash and is producing HTML5 and WebGL work for their clients.[25]

Awards

The Nick App, created by Fi for Nickelodeon, won an Emmy Award in 2013 for Outstanding Creative Achievement In Interactive Media.[26]

Wacom.com, Fi's large-scale redesign of the creative product website won Adobe's The Cutting Edge Award on September 2, 2013.[27]

Google Ramayana, Fi's interactive experience that helped Google launch their Chrome Browser in Southeast Asia won FWA's People's Choice Award in 2012.[28]

In October 2012 Fi's site redesign for USA Today won the Adobe Cutting Edge Award.[29]

Fi has received almost 50 awards from the FWA, including two Site of the Year Awards, earning them a Top Ten spot in the FWA's "Top 100 Most Awarded".[30]

Fi's work on Google's Project Re:Brief, won them a Cannes Silver Cyber Lion Award in 2012.[31]

In March 2011 Fi won Best Interactive site of the year awarded by Communications Arts for its Panamera.com website created for their longtime client Porsche.[32]

The Webby Awards have recognized many of Fi's projects in categories such as Education, Community, Mobile & Apps and Visual Design. In 2012 Cannes HeatMap won Webby's "Best Use of GPS or Location Technology."[33]

In 2008 Fi won the "Design Agency of the Year" award from .net Magazine.[34]

References

  1. ↑ "TheFWA - Hall of Fame". Retrieved 23 February 2015.
  2. ↑ "Press Releases". Retrieved 23 February 2015.
  3. ↑ Fi, (c) Fantasy Interactive, 2013. All Rights Reserved. "We are Fi – The Multi–Award Winning Digital Design Agency: Our Work". Retrieved 23 February 2015.
  4. ↑ "di.se - Supergasellen erövrar USA - i strumplästen". di.se. Retrieved 23 February 2015.
  5. ↑ "Från garaget till prispallen". Svenskt Näringsliv. Retrieved 23 February 2015.
  6. ↑ "Imagine Publishing". Imagine-ublishing.co.uk. Retrieved 23 February 2015.
  7. ↑ "TheFWA - Hall of Fame". Thefwa.com. Retrieved 23 February 2015.
  8. ↑ Archived June 20, 2011, at the Wayback Machine.
  9. ↑ "Design Envy · USA TODAY website redesign: Fantasy Interactive". Retrieved 23 February 2015.
  10. ↑ "USA Today Featured in .net Magazine". Retrieved 23 February 2015.
  11. ↑ "USA Today Featured in Web Designer Magazine". Retrieved 23 February 2015.
  12. ↑ "Explore Touch with Internet Explorer". Retrieved 23 February 2015.
  13. ↑ "Nick App Ranks #1 In Free iPad Entertainment Apps". Retrieved 23 February 2015.
  14. ↑ "An inside look: Nickelodeon’s new iPad app rises to the top of iTunes". Retrieved 23 February 2015.
  15. ↑ "net magazine - Creative Bloq". Retrieved 23 February 2015.
  16. ↑ "This Is What a Travel Site Should Look Like". WIRED. Retrieved 23 February 2015.
  17. ↑ "Fi creates the airline website of the future". Retrieved 23 February 2015.
  18. ↑ "Agency Creates New & Improved ‘Airline Website Of The Future’". Retrieved 23 February 2015.
  19. ↑ "Reverse pitch process". Adverblog. Retrieved 23 February 2015.
  20. ↑
  21. ↑ "Fido". Fido.se. Retrieved 2013-10-08.
  22. ↑ "10th Anniversary of Flash". TheFWA. Retrieved 2013-10-08.
  23. ↑ Fantasy Interactive, Computerarts.co.uk, 2005
  24. ↑ "Best Visual Design – Function | 2012 | The Webby Awards Gallery + Archive". Winners.webbyawards.com. Retrieved 2013-10-08.
  25. ↑ "Labs - We are Fi - This is our blog". Retrieved 23 February 2015.
  26. ↑ "Interactive Digital Media Programs to be Honored | Academy of Television Arts & Sciences". Emmys.com. 2013-08-22. Retrieved 2013-10-08.
  27. ↑ "Adobe / TheFWA | The Cutting Edge award winner | Wacom.com". Thefwa.com. Retrieved 2013-10-08.
  28. ↑ "Google Ramayana". TheFWA. 2012-07-16. Retrieved 2013-10-08.
  29. ↑ "Adobe / TheFWA | The Cutting Edge award winner | USA Today". Thefwa.com. Retrieved 2013-10-08.
  30. ↑ Archived November 27, 2012, at the Wayback Machine.
  31. ↑ (PDF) https://web.archive.org/20130320104907/http://www.canneslions.com/resources/downloads/winners_pdfs/Cannes_Lions_2012_Cyber_Lions_Winners.pdf. Archived from the original (PDF) on March 20, 2013. Retrieved April 5, 2013. Missing or empty |title= (help)
  32. ↑ "Communication Arts - 2011 Interactive Annual - Porsche Panamera, Welcome to The Family". Communication Arts. Retrieved 23 February 2015.
  33. ↑ "Best Use of GPS or Location Technology | 2012 | The Webby Awards Gallery + Archive". Winners.webbyawards.com. Retrieved 2013-10-08.
  34. ↑ Fi, (c) Fantasy Interactive, 2013. All Rights Reserved. "Fi – The Interactive Firm". Retrieved 23 February 2015.

External links

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