Meet The Future of Design Development, Ars Futura

BERLIN, Germany - Are you ready to meet the future of design development? Ars Futura has joined the Pangea universe and we couldn’t be happier to introduce you to this close-knit team of adventure-loving designers, developers, and product managers. There’s no stopping the unquenchable enthusiasm of this Croatian team!

Great People, Doing Great Work

Established in 2013 and headquartered in the beautiful Croatian capital of Zagreb, Ars Futura was founded with a single purpose in mind—to do great work with great people. Eight years on, and it certainly seems like they’ve achieved that goal: their tight-knit team has delivered top-quality work for huge names like Blizzard and Harvard University, and their products are used by millions of people across the globe.

Moreover, the company has been garnering well-earned recognition recently with high rankings on Deloitte’s Technology Fast 50 list two years in a row (2018 & 2019), followed by being named last year as a “Creator for Centuries” by Croatia’s International Economic Forum. Now that’s some high praise! For CEO Ivan Božić, the company’s success comes from focusing on both their clients and employees, growth:

“Building long-term partnerships with clients where they rely on us to provide the quality work so they can grow their business. For employees, it means building a stable environment where they can learn, grow, and have fun.”

We recently sat down with some of Ars Futura’s clients and employees to get their opinions of the company and, sure enough, the responses were universally great! The company achieved a truly impressive overall Pangea Score of 9.3/10.0 with high marks across the board. Why don’t we look a little closer at what makes Ars Futura such a great partner to have on your team?

Design, Tech... and Trips to the Beach!

With an overall Team Health Score of 9.2/10.0, it’s clear to see that the employees really enjoy their work, but why? In their own words:

“We are a company with close-knit team members who cooperate in a relaxed, but challenging, environment. Team members choose to work together, ask for help on projects, and spend time together outside of work. Although the deadlines are set, team members organize their time because we avoid unneeded pressure. A happy employee is the best employee! The benefits are aplenty and include remote work, paid meals, and an ample budget for team building and education.”

There are currently 27 happy employees at Ars Futura, spread out across the engineering, project management, design, QA, and business teams. The management team is committed to the development of its staff, promoting a full 7.4% of employees each year and regularly training interns. Full Stack Engineer Intern (and endless optimist) Nino, says that he immediately felt welcome as soon as he stepped into the cosy conference room for his first interview:

“The interview was friendly and relaxed, I like how warm the whole conversation was. You gave me a chance to show you what I do and my work and it made me feel cool. I especially liked my first day! I got my own place in the office, my table, Macbook, and merch. It made me feel grown-up or important in a way.”

Ars Futura has a fantastic score of 9.4/10.0 for company culture. The team loves to get together for team-building events at every chance they get, and in the past, they’ve done everything from taking a day trip to the island of Kornati in Croatia, to riding camels together in Jordan. They even had a winter team-building event in Mallorca planned before Covid hit—fingers crossed that they get to enjoy the sun, sea, and sand together before too long! It’s safe to say that—with a peer rapport score of 9.5/10.0—the team genuinely loves to spend time together.

“The people, the workflow, and the general atmosphere at Ars Futura are easy-going. There is never a hurry and the team is friendly.”

- Danijel, Junior Android Engineer and keen runner

There’s also plenty of opportunity for development at the company, as shown by their score of 9.5/10.0 for personal growth. Employees are encouraged to manage their own time and prioritise projects, but the management team will help their staff to improve at any opportunity. Through a combination of feedback, education, and new responsibilities, the team is always learning and developing to level up their skill sets.

“I love the fact that I work on so many different things. My official title is a QA Engineer, but I do a lot of DevOps. So, I get to learn and grow in my work a lot.”

- Boris, QA Engineer, and avid mountain climber

Sunny team building days FTW

A Delight to Work With

So the team loves working at Ars Futura. But what about the clients, do they love working with them? With an astounding Client Score of 9.4/10.0, it’s obvious that they do! The company has a wealth of experience working with a wide range of partners, ranging from startups to established industry leaders as well as agencies.

The team helps brands to turn visions into reality, and everything is tailor-made. They don’t shy away from experimentation—in fact, they thrive on it! The team loves to create interfaces that are eye-catching, user-friendly, and simply the very best they can be. Indeed, Ars Futura has a near-perfect technical expertise score of 9.7/10.0.

“To make ideas come to life, we produce interfaces that are both eye-catching and user-friendly. We don’t shy away from experimenting and have experience with diverse tools and design methods. Our goal is to create the best we can.”

- Ron Cherry, Product Owner @ Activision Blizzard

As well as their technical skills, clients are also super impressed with how easy the team is to work with, scoring 9.2/10.0 for project management. They have almost a decade of designing, building, and launching products including websites and mobile apps, so they work like a well-oiled machine. They’ve perfected their methodologies and processes to minimise their costs and increase the return on investment for their clients. And they’ll be by your side at every step of the way.

“The developers at Ars Futura are excellent. They care deeply about the quality of the code and architecture that they produce. Everyone I worked with was a great communicator, and pleasant to work with. I highly recommend them.”

- Head of Software @ Seed to Series A Startup

Hard work with a smile

Amazing Product Design

An award-winning software design and development company, Ars Futura is highly skilled in a number of different areas, and their team of engineers, designers, and product owners will work directly with your team on an end-to-end service.

That being said, they do have their preferences when it comes to their tech stack. They typically use Ruby on Rails, Node.JS, and React.JS to create products, but they have a wealth of knowledge and experience in other technologies and can work in different ways depending on your needs.

When it comes to mobile app development, they work with both Android and iOS, and have in-depth knowledge of Swift, Objective-C, Java, and Kotlin, and they also like to dabble in React Native.

So whether you’re looking for back-end or front-end development, a mobile app, or some really cool design development, Ars Futura could help to take your company into the future as they have done with so many others:

Is your product the next GamesBattles? Ars Futura transformed this platform, the largest cross-platform online gaming tournament system in the world, rethinking and rebranding it in one of their most challenging projects to date.

Or are you more like Harvard Innovation Lab? Ars Futura used Ruby on Rails to implement a CMS platform, wrangling a huge amount of data and helping to streamline the company’s operations at every step of the way in their 2-year strong partnership.

Let’s finish up with a reminder of the company’s values from CEO Ivan. If these strike a chord with you, then get in touch with Ars Futura for your next design development piece:

“Our values are: say no to hustling, work hard on keeping a good balance in your life, big picture work is important, but we like the tiny details, showing we put extra care into building things, give a damn about the people you work with and the projects you craft and put out a little bit of joy into the world & have some fun along the way.”