“And the award for the best Offline: Kiosk, Installation or On-Site Application goes to” …you could cut the tension with a knife… “Cogapp and their interactives for the Great North Museum!” Cue cries of joy, surges of adrenalin, and all round jubilation.

On Thursday 19 November we were proud to take home a British Interactive Media Association Award from the ceremony at Camden’s KOKO. Having started way back in the digital olden days of 1984, the BIMAs are one of the oldest and most renowned awards of their kind - so it goes without saying that our shiny new trophy is standing with pride amidst its brethren in the office. Its also by far the most dangerous trophy we’ve received - made of stainless steel and slightly reminiscent of a Klingon bat'leth.

I went up to London yesterday to see the Royal College of Art's graduate show, which was a real treat. I saw loads of great work - here's a small selection:

An exciting plug anyone? This one is designed by Min-Kyu Choi from the Design product course. It's brilliant.

Really nice illustrations by Hannah Warren

Haruka Shinji had put a book together called Once a Year about the annual concert of a 'Batphonist, the world's only bat player', and also made some great screen prints to accompany the book.

Some more background on the interactives we've recently installed at the Great North Museum...

Medieval Case Study

This looks at how archaeologists can find out about how people used to live from the objects they left behind - and imagines what objects from today will survive for the next 1,000 years. Aimed at a younger audience, this interactive is bright and breezy - but crucially is gauged towards a fairly short visit time and gets lots of information across in a punchy and engaging style.

The Orientation Map

This is one of the 'big ticket' items in the museum; a pair of interactive map tables that allow users to explore Northumbria and its key sites of interest.

We've just installed 15 interactives and 10 AV presentations at the brand new Great North Museum in Newcastle. The museum launched on Saturday and - as a combination of four existing museums - is an incredible mix of Prehistory,  Roman Britain, Ancient Egypt, nature and the environment. We're proud to have our work in this fantastic museum.This project adds another string to the Cogapp Violin* as it is made up of many separate deliverables, as opposed to one deliverable with many parts (like MoMA.Guide,  ParaData and countless other goodies). Here's a quick look at some of the interactives; we'll look at the AV bits in another blog.

Diversity of Life

When visitors first enter the museum they are greeted by the massive Diversity of Life wall. Two stories high and running the entire length of the opening gallery, the wall is home to hundreds of animal specimens, grouped into Tropical, Temperate, Desert and Polar regions.It would be impossible to provide useful signage in this environment - and that's where digital comes in. We've built eight interactives which give users access to a digital recreation of the wall and lets them find out more about each animal. It's a simple idea but the beauty of it is in the execution; there is almost no interface and the interactive does only a few things - but very very well.

Sadly this post has nothing to do with Dennis Norden holding a clipboard and saying, 'if you're one of those people...'

No. This one is all about the organised (and not so organised) chaos that happens in the last few weeks before a museum opens its doors. We've been lucky enough to be involved in the new Great North Museum, which opened on Saturday - and even luckier to go behind the scenes in the last few weeks of installation.

(That's a dinosaur in the Great North Museum. Nothing to do with us, but great!)

There's a scene in the movie Shakespeare in Love when the theatre manager, beset by financial woes, unreliable writers and the Master of the Revels threatening to shut him down, simply shrugs his shoulders and says, 'It'll all work out alright in the end. I don't know how, but it always does.' Launching a new museum or gallery is very like getting ready to launch a stage show - everything seems crazy until the last moment, when it suddenly all falls into place.