Since 2007, we have led our industry with cutting-edge technology solutions for clients around the world, but it wasn’t until 2014 that our co-founders officially launched BrightTree Studios, the design wing of Synergy Media Group.

Today, BrightTree Studios turns five, and we’re taking time to celebrate some of our firm’s biggest accomplishments thus far and tip our hats to the bright future ahead.


We come from humble, chance beginnings.

After having completed a high-tech project – some 80 classrooms – for California University of Pennsylvania, BrightTree Studios co-founder and president, Bill McIntosh, CTS-D, posted a low-quality video on YouTube, explaining how the technology in each classroom could be used.

A few weeks later, he received an email from a stranger at about three in the morning inquiring about the system and how it was designed. Thinking nothing of it, Bill ignored the message. Another week passed and Bill received the same email again, only this time from a Stanford University email address – signed the CIO of Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, who soon flew to Pennsylvania to meet Bill and see the classrooms for himself.

Impressed, he explained to Bill that Stanford was looking for a technology provider with experience doing something this complex but had had no luck. Before long, a new project at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business began and BrightTree Studios was born.

The very creation of BrightTree Studios is an achievement in and of itself. Our parent company, Synergy Media Group, was comprised of not just integrators and technicians, but designers and consultants with a wealth of certifications and years of industry experience. Regarded as industry disrupters for innovating the design-build paradigm, we harnessed our many talents and established BrightTree Studios as a separate entity – a design wing able to provide designs and consultations or collaborate with Synergy on built projects.

Innovative projects require a team that can prototype and do mockups. To provide clients with the best, newest, most useful, and most cost-efficient technology environments, designers need technical, hands-on counterparts who can make sure a solution actually works in practice. Having both our designers and integrators in-house helps us keep all of our clients on the bleeding edge – we can dare to dream bigger by providing impeccable technology solutions to our clients every time.

We’ve accomplished a lot in five years. Stanford University was our first client, and such a remarkable beginning launched us headfirst into an industry that has long needed everything BrightTree Studios has: a bridged gap in the design-build process, cutting-edge, award-winning technology designs, and some of the best and brightest young minds in the industry.

We’ve teamed on a number of incredible projects in our short time as a firm, and with huge undertakings like the Pittsburgh International Airport terminal modernization ahead, we’re looking forward to further sharing our work with Pittsburgh and the world.

Five years in business may be nothing huge, but it’s nothing small either. We’re proud of how far we’ve come and we can’t wait to see how much further we’ll go. This we can tell you: if the next five years are anything like our last, we’ll have quite a bit of celebrating to do. Won’t you join us?