What happens when two self-described 'art school guys,' both charged with creativity and well-versed in programming languages, decide to collaborate?

Ryan McCoy and Ian Lawson decided to find out, and the result was Atomic Interactive, a web design company that is quickly staking its ground in Dayton and beyond.

Since January 2007, the team at Atomic has designed web solutions for clients ranging from the Dayton Opera and Dayton History to high-tech research and development companies serving very specific markets.

Their creations are stunning both visually and technically, with interactive touches that demonstrate the thought and expertise that go into each project and take the sites above and beyond the norm. No detail goes unnoticed, giving users a smooth and aesthetically appealing experience no matter what they are using the website for.

And with plans for expansion, both in workforce and in services, the Atomic bomb is about to go off.

The beginning

Like many web programmers, Ian and Ryan were largely self-taught in the technical aspects of web design.

"My first job after college gave me the opportunity to manage a website," Ryan said. He had a basic idea of how to code and build websites, but it soon turned into a passion.

Ian's personal interest in animation pushed him towards interactive applications such as Flash, where he could turn his love for illustration and cartoons into web elements that move, change, and become dynamic. When the time came to choose between two jobs opportunities -- one as an illustrator for a t-shirt company, and the other working for a web agency -- he was already hooked.

Both of them eventually moved on to doing freelance work. "We thought it would be in our best interests to team up and better serve our clients," Ryan said. They chose the name Atomic Interactive to reflect both the energy and technology that goes into their web design processes.

Backstage

Any web designer can make a page with a list of links and an image or two, but when you add in requests for video players, animations, shopping carts, dynamic buttons, audio, and an eye-catching design, it becomes a whole new monster.

Fortunately the team at Atomic has a firm grasp on their process, from start to finish and beyond.

"We take a holistic approach to design and development," Ian said. "We do a lot of upfront research and planning before we even turn on Photoshop."

"We're taking something that the people need and making it better," Ryan added.

And when all is said and done, there's still work to do: Atomic helps its clients stay up-to-date and consistently improves the search engine optimization so the clients' sites always stay at the top of the Google results.

With so much going into any given project, you might conjure an image of a room of pale computer geeks hunched over their keyboards, coding franctically and muttering to themselves. But Atomic keeps the stress in check.

During the day they break up the rhythm with foosball and group lunch outings. At night, they leave the projects of the day in the office and head up to the roof to watch a Dragons game.

"We come to work every day and get to work with a group of the coolest people you can imagine," Ian said. "We have incredible synergy. There's no politics, no games. Everyone loves what they do."

"Everyone at Atomic is youthful -- maybe not physically, but definitely in spirit," Ryan joked.

And has that youth slowed them down at all in the business world? Quite the contrary. Their younger workforce "tries harder, learns more, and tries to compete to do a better job," Ian said.

"More mature people could be set in their ways and not receptive to new marketing techniques and new social media," he explained. But the Atomic team is "very receptive in how we do things."

Splash in some creativity from all directions and it's no wonder Atomic is having success. "We have artists, people who play in rock bands, photographers, writers, painters," Ryan said. "Artistically there's a lot of talent. We take people's interests into consideration and ask them 'What do you guys want to do?'"

Creativity "allows us to communicate ideas more easily and take unique approaches to the work based on theories across the art spectrum," Ian said.

Present and future

It's not easy to be a small business during an economic recession, but that hasn't seemed to be much of a problem for Atomic.

"As the recession starts to die down a little bit, we've come out with a longer list of clients and a stronger team," Ryan said.

"We've worked with some companies who know how to take advantage of a down economy by doing marketing stuff online and moving budgets into online activity," he added.

Part of Atomic's success can certainly be attributed to the roots they've put down in Dayton, even in such a short time. They've invested in the community by working with non-profits and donating resources to those projects.

Current pursuits include a website for a K-12 gallery downtown, a partially-donated project for ThinkTV, digital mashups for middle school children, and managing the web portion of a campaign called 'Get Up Montgomery County' aimed at fighting childhood obesity.

And there are some things in the works that we'll just have to wait to see. "We're pushing our company to developing our own software," Ian said, although he wouldn't elaborate on exactly what those applications will do. "We want to create products as well as marketing tools, products of Atomic's instead of using other people's applications."

"Within the next few years, Atomic is going to double in size and amount of employees," Ryan said. "We definitely want to get to a point where we're doing higher-end work."

"We'd like to continue to bring in the most talented designers," he added, "and help put Dayton on the map as a creative resource and a strong entrepreneurial location in the Midwest."

The goals are big, to be sure. But Atomic has shown they have the vision, the drive, and the innovation to make it happen.

The smallest reaction between atoms can trigger an explosion, and there's no doubt that Atomic Interactive is on its way to making a big impact.

Want to know more?

See samples of Atomic's work and get in touch with Ryan McCoy and Ian Lawson at http://atomicinteractive.com/

Take a Flickr tour of their office in the Firefly Building on Webster Street in downtown Dayton.

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