Introduction to the UnReal Designs

How did we get this good?

Years of experience.

UnReal Designs is owned by Theresa Kinney-Johnson, aka Tessa Harrington in Second Life, who has been in the business of creating what she has termed 'Virtual Environs' since 1993, when the phrase 'OpenGL' was just a term paper idea in the hands of an enterprising college student.

Ms. Johnson was like most, chatting on the web, when she heard of a new venue for chat called ActiveWorlds. The moment she walked in she knew she was looking at the 3D Web, and immediately set out to open the first 3D Internet Mall on the World Wide Web. In December, 1995, just six months after discovering ActiveWorlds, she opened Bizworld - a demonstration of the power of real E-Commerce in Virtual Environs that offered real products for sale via web-on-a-prim connections to paying and affiliate companies.

For five years, Ms. Johnson
worked diligently under the
company name VirtaCity
Studios, LLC, to create a
ground swell of demand for
the 3D Web. She earned a
5k grant from a local commerce
development organization
to hit the road and spread
the word about what her
design team could do. After
many meetings with such as the University of
Houston and IP Factory, the horizon looked very promising.
But then, just as VirtaCity Studios was courting venture
capital, the tech stock crash of 2000 hit. Within eighteen
months, VirtaCity Studios was forced to close their virtual
doors. Ms. Johnson didn't give up though, returning to her
traditional 2D web design roots, updating her skills and
dabbling in Indie game design to keep her hand in the 3D
scene.

In 2002, Ms. Johnson heard of Linden Labs and kept a close eye on their progress in creating Second Life. By 2005, it was evident the time was ripe to jump back in, and jump she did! From the moment she finished her first build, Ms. Johnson was booked solid with commission requests from Second Life residents to create custom homes and group builds, and to develop full sims, doing business as UnReal Designs. She was one of the first to get paid in Lindens for her work, earning amounts high enough to be of USD exchange value by the end of that first year. Each client sent her more and more work and referrals. By the middle of 2006, her business had grown such that she had a waiting list of five month, even though she never advertised. It was then she began forming teams to allow her to manage multiple projects, always creating the main design and texturing herself, but building long term loyalty from her artisan builders by allowing them to express their skills and elaborate on her designs.

In 2007, the lid blew off. Corporate America finally woke up to the 3D Web, and wanted in. UnReal Designs managed to juggle an average of three projects simultaneously with a team of ten core members, landing select plum jobs, both international and national; New Holland, a sim developed for the Netherlands Department of Tourism and Conventions; ongoing work for CADE and the University of Illinois; and Li, a sim owned by the Love Infinite Foundation, a non-profit organization founded and managed by Casey Jones, VP of Global Marketing for Dell Computer.

Today, UnReal Designs is recognized by many of its peers as one of the most professional, dependable and innovative full service design firms in Second Life. While other firms have stalled, UnReal Designs keeps facing the challenges and giving its client's reasons to stay invested in the 3D web, be it through Second Life or other emerging platforms, through its visionary designs and impeccable results.