Industry Advertising Headquarters Oulu, Finland Type Privately held company | Website www.vwd.fi Founded 1996, Oulu, Finland | |
Key people Juho Risku, Founder in 1996, CEO between 1996 - 2005, Chairman 1996 - 2010, Kimmo Alamartimo, CEO 2005 - 2009, Pekka Sipola, CEO 2009 - Present Number of employees 7 as of December 1, 2007 | ||
Mainostoimisto VwD is an advertising agency based in Oulu, Finland. Its former name was Visualway Design, Inc.
Visualway Design was founded in 1996 by Juho Risku and it has roots in web technology development. It produced its first AJAX-type e-commerce application as early as in 1997. Between 1998-2003 it continued to develop its client-side web-technology mainly for use in website projects. The result was browser-independent, lightweight client-side application called Virtual Browser. Visualway Design filed a patent for Virtual Browser in 2003 and it was granted in 2006.
In 2004 Visualway Design spun off Helmi Technologies, which continued to develop Virtual Browser and other products based on Visualway technology. By that time Visualway Design had already transformed itself into design oriented full-service advertising agency. In 2010 Visualway Design changed its name to Mainostoimisto VwD (translation: Advertising Agency VwD) to reflect the change in its business.
Website and web application production are still an important part of company's activities. However, nowadays company's service offering is wider and ranges from conventional to digital solutions in marketing and communications design.