XR Nation Citizen's Spotlight: Overly
Updated: Jan 27, 2021
Citizen's Spotlight is a weekly series sharing an XR Nation citizen's story.
RIGA, LATVIA (November 11, 2020) – Launched in 2014, Overly became the first agency in the Baltic States that solely focuses on Augmented Reality (AR) technologies and the development of AR solutions. To this day, the business firmly holds its position as the region’s only provider of marker-based Augmented Reality experiences through its core product – the Overly app.
Without visual props, the Overly app is best described as a tool that breathes life into static photos, banners, ads, or other print media providing businesses and organizations with an interactive platform to boost their storytelling efforts. The Overly app places virtual content into a user’s perception of the real world - be it a photo, video, or a 3D model (to name a few of the app’s 14 core AR features).
Our product doesn’t diminish traditional media but, rather, gives it a second life. Almost all pieces of traditional media can be captured and turned into AR-enabled photo markers. Once a marker is uploaded onto our internal system, it can then be scanned with the Overly app and the content that our clients have prepared shows up.
We have teamed up with numerous publications to date, showing some incredible customer engagement, but magazines and newspapers are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of our clientele. The app can also be used in education to banish any boredom that was once present in the classroom. It can also spruce up marketing materials, be it brochures that showcase one’s product or an Augmented Reality business card to wow potential clients or partners. Whilst artists often use Augmented Reality to give a soft digital edge to their masterpieces, advertisers tend to use our app to take their campaigns to new heights by erecting larger outdoor banners.
Overly was set up by two friends-turned-business partners, Ainars Klavins and Gatis Zvejnieks, who were both the managers and the staff when the company was first launched. Since those humble beginnings, we have grown to nine full-time team members, including interns, but that’s not all. It’s been our strategy to reside at Coworking Riga, which allows for a lot of ad-hoc support like marketing, design, and software development to be outsourced to freelancers or other start-ups.
It’s been nearly seven years since our first Overly app project came to life, and we have since become a recognized regional and international partner for providing a new-age medium for quality communication and interaction with target audiences. We’ve delivered more than 300 Overly app projects across multiple countries in different continents. We’ve been spotted in the USA, Malta, the Netherlands, France, Kenya, and Serbia to name a few. We’ve worked with one of the biggest publishing houses in Belgium, IPM, adding AR to multiple magazines.
One of our biggest and most recent collaborations has come in the form of global superstar Ed Sheeran and his record label Warner Bros for the star’s concert in Finland. We were recruited by our Finnish partner agency outdoor advertising company Laulava Ovipumppu to bring the project to life. We’ve also produced content for other musical extravaganzas by adding Augmented Reality to Eurovision projects in Latvia and Estonia. In the retail space, our clients include Topshop and Phillips just to name a couple.
However, we believe that the ever-growing demand for new experiences and AR technologies means that the most growth is still ahead of us. We have just launched a self-service DIY Augmented Reality creator where anyone can create their own Augmented Reality experiences. Based on the initial feedback, we are continuously working on upgrading the service.
Below are five of our expertise areas, but we’re always open to working on both marker-based and markerless custom solutions.
Another recent development for us is the launch of our portable photogrammetry rig, ready to be set up anywhere across Europe. We designed the product in a bid to deliver detailed new age replicas of people, animals, clothing, and 3D objects for heritage conservation, archaeology, museums, educators, artists, marketers, and game devs.
The portable 3D capture rig is made up of 36 Canon 18-megapixel cameras and uses a combination of art, science, and technology to capture numerous 2D images and precisely interpret the results in 3D. Unlike expensive laser scanning equipment that generates point clouds or a grey mesh, photogrammetry allows for photorealistic 3D copies with crisp textures to be captured. These are immediately transferable for use within Virtual Reality contexts with little editing required.
A while back the world's leading global business publication, Financial Times, named us as one of the top 100 changemakers in Central and Eastern Europe, and we sure intend to keep the title!
Find out more about us. Watch and try-out demo case studies on our website, or get in touch with us at hello@overlyapp.com.
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