Museum & heritage website design & development

Multimedia for museum & heritage projects

Multimedia with web and CD-ROM delivery

Visiting a museum or gallery is a "multimedia" experience.Since the first label was placed in an exhibition gallery, visitors have gathered information both by looking at things and reading about them.

Multimedia is simply the combination of two or more media types, and these can range from text and images to audio, panoramas, animation and video.

Why use multimedia?

Multimedia can be used as an effective communications tool, interpreting museum artefacts and collections both within the location (in the exhibition gallery or on an orientation screen) and through distribution mechanisms (such as published CD-ROMs or multimedia databases accessible through the web).

Add interactivity to multimedia and we have the ability to store, combine, retrieve, and present information from a variety of media and provide user-defined interactive navigation through these sources.
The user must make choices, ask questions or define search criteria to activate the system and retrieve information from it. This creates an exciting wealth of possibilities in all areas of museum activity, including education/interpretation, curatorial research, and documentation.

Multimedia can also be used as a documentation tool, building integrated museum databases that record information about collections. These may be used simply as internal collections management or documentation resources, or they can be made accessible to outside researchers via the web or CD products or be part of an interactive learning approach.

Multimedia can be used in:

• Gallery item interpretation
• Web-delivered databases
• Exhibition online marketing and promotion
• Museum online marketing and promotion
• Online learning and education
• Outreach
• Oral history projects
• Archiving
• Research content
• Internal management
• CD products to sell
• Advertising and promotion of museums and individual exhibitions
• Pre-visit experience and information
• Accessibility to restricted areas or items
• Cross museum projects
• Viral marketing

Using multimedia with web technology means redefining a site’s audience, however large or small the establishment is, to include museum visitors, researchers and staff, whether in the museum or working remotely locally, nationally, or globally.

Examples of online multimedia applications:

• Console for choosing online video / film clips
• Interactive album for exploring resources
• Online audio interviews with eyewitnesses or experts, sound bites and music clips
• Exploration by m oving around, and zooming in, on a 360 degree panorama of a location (indoors or outdoors), with rollover information popups
• Virtual tour of a location or venue.
• Viewing an item online from all angles, choosing to see it in different locations, zooming in on details, choosing the level of technical details you require
• Interactive online video for demonstrations or re-enactments
• Fun learning experiences through online quizzes, drag and drop games, multiple choce activities and role play learning

How we can help

At Footmark Media we have a genuine interest in helping museums make the best of their collections and we offer cost-effective creation and development of multimedia items or projects. We have a passion for communication and will look for creative solutions to make the best impact within your budget requirements. For more information or to discuss your requirements contact us.

Costings for grant applications

We also help museums and heritage projects with costings for grant and Heritage Lottery Fund applications; for more information contact Richard.gray@footmark.com.

See our > portfolio for examples of our work.