Headquarters of Phenomblue, a digital design agency in Omaha that has recently expanded to LA. Photo from the Midlands Business Journal.
Phenomblue has expanded to Los Angeles to accommodate its needs as a growing, seven-year-old digital design agency.
“We’re hoping to bring the success of Omaha to the West,” said Joe Olsen, Phenomblue’s CEO and director of strategy. “If we can be half as successful [there], we’ll be in great shape.”
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The Los Angeles office will mesh the opportunities of a new place with the culture established in Phenomblue’s Omaha headquarters. The agency already has offices in New York and Montreal for sales and support. However, the new office will serve as a replication of what has been created in the heartland and as one of few mid-size agencies in the digital market of the city.
The Omaha headquarters will continue to serve 99 percent of the agency’s work with a team of less than 50 employees. Retaining this number has worked well for the agency in its Omaha office, and reaching this capacity gives reason to expand. Currently, the Los Angeles office is working to attain a team of 8-10 employees who have a local feel for what’s on the ground in the city.
With the new office, Phenomblue will now be available to clients until the close of business in the Pacific Time Zone. Olsen said that will help the company operate more effectively for all clients – from New York to Colorado to California – and further evolve as a full digital agency.
(Left, Google maps image of Phenomblue’s new L.A. office, image courtesy of Phenomblue.)
As Phenomblue ventures to California to harness time and tap into the resources of a different environment, the agency continues to advance its headquarters in Omaha.
“We’ve been working with the latest builds of Flash Builder 4.5 and the AIR 2.7 SDK, which streamline the development of cross-platform mobile applications that run on Android, iOS and BlackBerry Playbook,” said Kate Richling, marketing director of the Omaha office.
In the web space, Phenomblue continues to explore the possibilities offered by HTML5, including rich animations, real-time communication and cutting-edge video players. Olsen said 3D video is also on its way back among the agency’s clients and filtering their requests will be particularly helpful in Los Angeles as the office is in a “nature space” for such activity. For reasons like this, it is important Phenomblue has reached outside of Omaha to inject different perspective into the the agency’s work, Olsen said.
The next generation for Phenomblue plans to include community platforms for educators and further involve multi-touch technologies, as the client interest has heightened. Because of this next direction, the agency has been preparing for the projected late-summer release of the Samsung SUR40 (Microsoft Surface 2.0) and continues to be driven by different developments of tech in-house.
As the agency matures and expands, experimenting with new technology has built a comfort level and skill set that Richling said helps the agency deliver interactivity and “immersive experience” to more clients.
For more information on Phenomblue and its new office, visit more.phenomblue.com
