What the Auggie Awards Represent

To understand why two Auggie Awards matter, it helps to understand what they are. The Auggies, presented annually at the Augmented World Expo, are widely considered the XR industry's highest honor — the equivalent of an Oscar for the world of augmented and mixed reality. Since 2010, they have recognized the most innovative and technically accomplished work in a field that sits at the intersection of technology, design, storytelling, and human experience.

Winning once is a distinction. Winning twice — in 2015 and 2017 — in the Best Art or Film category places Ean Mering and his collaborators among a very small group of creative professionals who have helped define what is possible when emerging technology meets serious creative intent.

These were not awards for novelty. The Auggie judging panel evaluates work on creativity, design, innovation, and real-world impact. The bar is set by some of the most technically sophisticated minds in the industry. Clearing it twice, two years apart, speaks to a sustained commitment to craft rather than a single fortunate moment.

Bringing mixed reality experiences to life has been a deep passion

At the Frontier of a New Medium

The years 2015 and 2017 were not ordinary years in the history of augmented and mixed reality. They were years of genuine disruption — when headsets like the HTC Vive were reaching early adopters, when the entertainment industry was beginning to ask serious questions about what immersive storytelling could look like, and when a handful of pioneering teams were building the vocabulary of an entirely new medium without a roadmap to follow.

Mering's award-winning work lived in that space. Working with augmented reality in the context of film required not just technical fluency but a creative instinct that most people on either side of the technology-art divide hadn't yet developed. The question was never simply whether something could be built. The question was whether it was worth building — whether it communicated something, moved someone, or opened a door that hadn't existed before.

That is the question that great creative technologists ask. And the answer, judged by the most respected voices in the XR industry, was yes. Twice.

Early AR experiments

The Bridge Between Creativity and Technology

What Ean Mering's Auggie Awards represent in the context of his broader career is a through line that runs from his earliest work in advertising through his film production credits and into the spatial computing and previsualization work he does today. The through line is this: technology has never been the point. The story has always been the point.

The most sophisticated creative technologists are not people who are fascinated by tools. They are people who are fascinated by human experience and who have developed the technical range to shape it in ways that weren't previously available. The Auggie Awards recognized that quality in Mering — the ability to use emerging technology in service of something that genuinely resonated with an audience.

That ability doesn't expire when a technology moves on. It transfers. The instincts developed while building award-winning AR experiences in 2015 and 2017 are the same instincts that inform how Mering approaches previsualization, production design, and creative consulting today. The tools change. The underlying commitment to craft does not.

The Auggie Award

Two Trophies. One Standard.

There is something telling about winning an award like the Auggie not once but twice. A single win can be credited to timing, to a strong team, to a particularly resonant project. Two wins, separated by two years of continued work in a field that was evolving rapidly, suggest something more durable — a professional standard that doesn't drift when circumstances change.

That standard is what Ean Mering brings to every project he works on, whether the medium is augmented reality, independent film, commercial production, or the architectural visualization work he does today. The Auggie Awards are the industry's recognition of that standard. But the standard itself was already there.

Best AR in Film, June 2015

Best Art or Film sponsored by Unity, June 2017