Journey and Squint/Opera Merge To Create The First Agency With Proven Expertise Blending The Physical And The Virtual Worlds At Global Scale

The Addition Doubles Journey's Scale and Adds Studios in London, New York and Dubai

NEW YORK, Nov. 1, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Journey, an innovation and design agency, announced the addition of Squint/Opera, a leading creative studio which bridges the worlds of architecture, design, media, and technology to produce compelling narrative driven immersive experiences in physical and virtual worlds. Squint/Opera's expertise combined with Journey's industry-leading capabilities in physical, spatial voice, gaming and metaverse design provides a unique combination of talent focused on the creation of new 3D experiences.

Squint/Opera has completed numerous physical immersive projects globally, notably the Observatory at The Empire State Building, a top-to-bottom reimagining of the World's Most Famous Building punctuated by immersive media experiences where the streets of 1930s New York come to life, King Kong ducks from biplanes, and the building is constructed around you. Other large-scale projects include the soon-to-open Oman Across Ages Museum in Oman, Bordeaux wine museum, and the V&A Videogames exhibition in London. In addition, Squint/Opera has created virtual worlds and digital experiences in collaboration with some of the leading architecture practices in the world, for example Toyota Woven City with the Bjarke Ingels Group, and Hot Heart with Carlo Ratti Associati. Squint/Opera is a leader in using Unreal Engine, part of Epic Games, to create large scale virtual twins of future cities, as well as employing Virtual Production techniques to create filmic visions of places and industries, such as Trojena. Squint/Opera are pioneers in the creation of B2B and enterprise virtual worlds, applying a wide variety of 3D design techniques to real world projects.

"The opportunity to join Journey was momentous," said Julius Coke, CEO of Squint/Opera. "Over the last few years Squint has experienced significant growth, as the demand for immersive 3D experiences grows and new platforms and technologies enable a new level of creativity tapping into our storytelling, virtual production and creative media skills. 

"Creating the next chapter in the 3D end customer journey requires integrated teams working across traditionally siloed disciplines," said Andy Zimmerman, CEO of Journey, "With the addition of Squint/Opera, Journey is the first agency to bring these diverse skills and talents together at a global scale, to engage with the world's biggest brands and most ambitious projects." 

About Journey
Journey, the agency of the futurescape, supports clients in creating the next chapter in their customers' journey. Backed by Growth Catalyst Partners, Journey was founded in 2022 and has studios in New York, London, Dallas, Miami, Costa Rica and Dubai.  Journey includes (In addition to Squint/Opera), leading studios in the physical (ICRAVE), voice (Skilled Creative), and metaverse/gaming/Web3 (Future Intelligence Group and TheDevHouseAgency) Clients include Walmart, Clinique, Entertainment Weekly, HBO, JetBlue, Marquee Nightclub, STK, Warner Music Group, MoMA, Procter & Gamble, Wall Street Journal, Sloan Kettering, and more.

About Squint/Opera
Squint/Opera are experts at blending digital media with physical reality. Using the power of narrative, they help clients craft digital content that can communicate, enhance or immerse an audience. Founded in London in 2001 by four young friends who wanted to help visionary thinkers and institutions make the radical a reality, they have delivered projects in every corner of the globe for a wide array of clients across architecture, government, real estate, museums and attractions.

About Growth Catalyst Partners
Growth Catalyst Partners is a middle market private equity firm investing in information, marketing and tech-enabled services businesses. GCP's strategy involves targeting growth segments of industries and identifying and building market-leading companies with breakout potential. GCP partners with company founders and owners along with top executives within those industries and provides capital, proprietary deal origination and operating expertise to the management teams. GCP's team has deep sector expertise and has led hundreds of transactions and successful investments in services businesses for over 20 years. Since the firm's founding in 2015, GCP has completed over 75 acquisitions across its industry-leading platform companies. For more information, visit www.growthcatalystpartners.com

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SOURCE Journey