Using the time difference between Tokyo and Zurich to our advantage, iA built some of the biggest web sites in Europe. With seven people.

Between 2008 and 2009, we architected and designed eight news sites, two online services and ten corporate sites. All our clients’ websites combined produce over 3.4 billion page views per year. Parallel to our client projects we publish the yearly Web Trend Map, we write and tweet and run two online services. How do we manage to be so productive?

Our team is split up in a strategic and a production unit. In Zurich, we plan and structure, in Tokyo we design and develop. While at most agencies need a sleep period, one half of iA is always at work. Combining the cultural strength of Japanese delicacy and Swiss organization, we have developed a highly effective simple design method.

Founded in June 2000 under the name of SARX (System Architects) and restarted in Tokyo in 2005, Information Architects Inc. is now owned and managed by:

Oliver Reichenstein, CEO. MA Philosophy, former senior brand consultant Interbrand
Cyrill Treptow, Partner. MBA, former marketing manager Tamedia
Chris Lüscher, Partner. MA Sociology, former product manager Tamedia

iA has been featured in magazines, newspapers, and thousands of websites from around the globe. Here are a few quotes:

…one of the best-known design agencies in the world.

—Corriere Della Sera, November 29th, 2007

Nice. You are one of the only people in twelve years to get (or at least state) that point about my site’s business value.

—Jakob Nielsen on iA, November 20th, 2006

Minimalist, efficient and aesthetically pleasing. A good recipe for any website. A great recipe for any design project. In its subtleness, the www.zeit.de concept becomes a design lesson for all of us.

—Mario García on iA’s Redesign of ZEIT ONLINE, September 15th, 2009

We have a dense personal network to leading designers and tech people in Japan, Europe and the USA.

iA is in close contact with the next generation of user experience design professionals such as Aza Raskin, Scott Thomas, Vitor Lourenço or Paul Bakaus.

Our blog is read by design professionals from all fields. Our articles get feedback from Jakob Nielsen, Jarred Spool, Wilson Miner, and Mario Garcia–just to name a few.

Our twitter account is followed by opinion leaders such as Michael Arrington, Jeffrey Zeldman, Vitor Lourenço, Mario Garcia, Khoi Vinh, John Boardley, Pentagram Design, Tina Roth Eisenberg, Daniel Freitag, Jason Santa Maria, Antonio Carusone, Jim Coudal, Mark Boulton, Steve Rubel, Scott Thomas, Aza Raskin, Robert Scoble, Vitaly Friedman, Nobuyuki Hayashi, Matthias Schrader, Joi Ito and Gerd Leonhard.

We entertain active client relationships with the editors in chief of leading editorial houses as Wolfgang Blau from ZEIT ONLINE, Peter Wälty and Res Strehle from Tages-Anzeiger, Guido Mingels from DAS MAGAZIN, Susanne Obermayer from Krone.at and Giovannni de Mauro from Internazionale. Our strategy team in Switzerland is in contact with the leading figures in the European tech and publishing industry. For high end tech projects we work closely with the programming geniuses from The Plant.