Nymbol

Nymbol are a team of creative and technical people who specialise in working with arts, cultural and heritage organisations. We find new and stimulating ways to present digital archives and collections, using platforms such as smart phones, tablets, web, touch and gesture technology.

Our clients include galleries, libraries, archives and museums, all of whom share our goal of creating exciting experiences for 21st century audiences.

Whilst all our apps, websites and interactives are bespoke, we use a purpose-built backend system designed specifically for cultural and archive content. This means that we can deliver the goods more quickly and for less money than you might expect.

The Nymbol approach is to work in full partnership with our client’s curatorial, marketing and education experts to create designs and online pathways that are unique and effective.

Find out how Nymbol can help you

Our technology

Nymbol is able to offer customised solutions because we have a purpose-built Content Management Systems (CMS), built with the needs of the cultural and heritage sector in mind.

The CMS acts as a building block or foundation, which can handle any type of digital content such as images, documents, PDFs, video and audio. It aims to be as powerful as it is flexible, allowing items to be added, organised, stored, amended and published to multiple platforms through a simple and intuitive interface.

The front-end platforms chosen by our clients can then take any form, including mobile apps, interactive websites, touch table applications, Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and geo-location.

We know how important it is for organisations to control and update their own content. The CMS system is extremely user-friendly and can be managed and updated by staff in an organisation, so there is no need to come back to us for content updates.

In all, we aim to provide our clients with the highest-level of resource in a time-and cost-effective manner.

• Mobile apps
• Web
• Large format and touch screens
• Other technologies

Read more about the platforms we work with

How we work

Nymbol are specialists in our field and as such we’ve developed some tried and tested methods of working. This is our approach:

1. Discussion & collaboration

   The most vital part of our process is to work in full collaboration with our clients’ in-house team, including curators, archivists, marketers, education and visitor experience experts. We need to really understand the vision and ambitions of the client organisation, the kind of audiences they want to reach and the stories behind the material in their collections and archives.

   Our team of content specialists and developers will then work with the organisation to create new ideas and solutions for how to tell these stories digitally.

2. Workshop

   Workshop discussions allow us to gain a deeper understanding of the organisation. We ask lots of questions about the archive, the organisation’s visions and its target audiences. Although no two developments are the same, we also like to give the organisation a chance to find out about Nymbol’s full range of technologies and understand what’s possible from seeing what others have achieved.

3. Design and content development

   The design of any Nymbol project is guided by the stories within an organisation, including their collections and archives. We work with you to develop content, funding new ways of making connections across your archives and collections and uncovering items that may never have been available to a digital audience. Early work on content development informs the design and ultimately technical build of the digital experience.

4. Iterative development and user feedback

   Our development process is iterative – which means we check back regularly with key stakeholders within the organisation and more importantly the potential audiences. This way we can gain feedback and test audience reactions to inform the development, as we go. 

   If the idea we are developing is particularly new for the organisation, we often produce a prototype before moving forwards with development. 

5. Sourcing funding

   We also work alongside cultural and heritage organisations to help secure grants and other funding for their innovative digital projects – previous clients have been awarded funding by the Technology Strategy Board and Creative England, with our support.

   If you have a budget but it needs topping up, we’d be happy to discuss solutions.

Find out more about our process