This month we’re celebrating 20 years of Bloc – 20 years of innovation, creativity and pushing the boundaries; 20 years since the Bloc vision was first brought to life.

What better way to mark the milestone than exploring what makes us the company we are today. From our core disciplines to our people, our Derby home and investment in skills, in a series unveiling five words a week we discuss the 20 ‘building Blocs’ that, when combined, make Bloc Digital.

Teamwork and collaboration is at heart of what we do. Our people make us who we are and what we stand for.

We seek, attract, appoint and nurture the best talent from within and outside of the region to engage fresh ideas and perspectives.

Maximising opportunities, maximising impact.

By creating digital and immersive solutions which work across sectors, audiences and crucially in real and virtual worlds, we are building in legacy, growth and development for clients and their assets.

Don’t just tell – show. Combining the physical world with layers of digital information and sensory experiences, we’re supporting organisations to connect with their customers, partners and employees in new ways.

Increasing and enhancing the communication of concepts, processes and marketing, digital and immersive solutions are providing new ways to sell, learn and examine products, and open up spaces constrained by physical restrictions.

In this changed physical and increasingly digitised business environment we’re supporting organisations to work smarter, more efficiently, sustainably and with resilience. Our visualisations and immersive solutions offer benefits across business from communication, product design and collaboration to growth and operations.

Whether it’s through animations, immersive applications or completely new bespoke solutions, we’re focussed on engaging, educating and energising audiences.

Blending digital technology, design and storytelling…we bring industry to life.

When supporting industry through digital visualisation and applied technology, precision and a deep understanding of the industrial and technical process underpins our creative and impactful solutions.

Bringing products, concepts and designs to life is where it all began. But not where it stopped. Embracing new opportunities and game-changing developments like photogrammetry, over the last 20 years our experience, precision and technical ability has only deepened.

The development of our animation studio 6 years ago formed a blueprint for our recent and future growth. Adopting new capabilities, skills and creative opportunities has driven us over the last 20 years … and the next will be just as innovative, bold and exciting.

Producing cutting-edge solutions in augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR) and IoT systems, we’re constantly evaluating new hardware and software, pioneering products and developing techniques.

Stepping into the digital world. With the growth of our web and app development team, the next 20 years will harness the power of this technology to connect clients and customers, enhance understanding through e-learning, and improve visibility with IoT systems.

Whether it’s creating interactive and immersive training solutions for clients or investing in learning and development with our own team, we’re actively building skills.

Inspiring next generation talent we’re constantly developing our programme of apprenticeships, work experience, internships and STEM activities.

Creating digital visualisations to showcase product features and building immersive frameworks to enhance learning within industry – knowledge sharing is intrinsic to our business.

We’re building and sharing knowledge as key partners in strategic national research and development programmes, securing InnovateUK funding and recruiting three successful Knowledge Transfer Partnership associates from the University of Derby.

Connecting the human to the technology. Building interactive responsive and virtual ‘hands-on’ experiences into centric solutions, we help provide deeper understanding, improved skills learning and retention, and stronger engagement.

We’re helping clients utilise real time data, organise data, and capture data effectively and visually.

Going beyond metrics and code, it’s about creating experiences, enhancing learning, connecting the human and the data to provide effective solutions.

Technology is central to everything ‘Bloc’. Whether it’s the newest, most advanced VR headset or improved software capabilities, we test, invest and evaluate – utilising our expertise to improve client processes and offerings.

Developing and trailing new technologies, we’re building on our pioneering spirit of the last 20 years to add benefit to every stage of manufacturing and tech process – from conception, design, manufacturing and operations to maintenance, modification and next generation product development.

Looking to the future we’re investing in research and keeping our sights on the horizon.

In the words of our founding directors Chris and Keith, “We’ve always wanted to shake things up a little.”

Whether that’s to challenge the idea that design and creative talent is only found in London or big cities or to take digital and immersive tech from one sector and apply it to another. Our vision is to excite the visualisation industry and showcase what talent and innovation the region has to offer.

Harnessing collaboration and a “can do” attitude, we enable other businesses in the region to showcase, demonstrate and market their expertise and success. We’re helping ensure that, as a city, we collaboratively maximise the power of our profiles, investment and business.

We’re proud to call Derby our home.

From interactive virtual events to systems accelerating VR production, we’re innovating and embracing new technology.

We pride ourselves on our agility and ability to pioneer and utilise emerging technologies – capturing and harnessing the best innovations to help businesses work smarter.

From two people to a team of more than 50. From technical illustrations to virtual reality immersive environments and from Derby to the world… 20 years of growth and there’s a lot more to come.