Swindon design agency GEL Studios wins prestigious contract to create new Archives Portal Europe

The team at GEL Studios have been appointed to create the new look Archives Portal Europe handling hundreds of millions of pieces of content as well as creating a dynamic and user friendly site.

Archives Portal Europe is an online resource for researchers and academics to access historical information and documents from European countries. Its archive is vast – currently standing at 370 million pieces of content and constantly rising - and its aim is to provide a hub of accessible material and data which can be accessed easily. However the old site is dated and not fit for purpose in the modern world of communication. 

Managing Director Graeme Leighfield, who founded GEL Studios, travelled to Madrid in Spain to find out about the project and then tendered for the work alongside much larger agencies. 

Graeme said: “This project has been a fantastic win for us given the strength and quality of the agencies we were up against. We won this project because we stood out. We’ve been told we really listened to the client, understood their needs and were able to demonstrate through previous works that we are fully competent to deliver the solution end to end.

“The project entails us creating a new, modern look for this portal which is used by researchers and academics globally. We are working with some 400 million pieces of content while at the same time creating an exciting, modern, user-friendly and responsive portal. We hope to share the finished project by the beginning of Q3 2020.”

Kerstin Arnold, representing the Archives Portal Europe said:  

"Our collaboration with GEL Studios falls in line with an approach we have followed previously - getting new perspectives by adding people with different and diverse backgrounds to the mix. Half-way into the redesign, this has proven to be the perfect choice: the team at GEL not only challenged existing workflows, but helped us to develop them further and to add some new ones, which I am sure will be more than welcomed by our users. 

“I am looking forward to seeing what more we can achieve together now that we get into the last stretch of the development phase."

GEL Studios, based in South Marston, has gone from strength to strength since it began with clients now ranging from Comedy Central and Future Fit Training to small, local, independent businesses such as Eggelicious, Aura Signs and Ottr Works.

The team are already known for their award wins. Last year they were named as the 2019 Techie Team of the Year in the South West regional Techie Awards.