In 1986, 900 years after William the Conqueror’s original Domesday Book, the BBC published the Domesday Project. The project was probably the most ambitious attempt ever to capture the essence of life in the United Kingdom. Over a million people contributed to this digital snapshot of the country.

25 Years later, the BBC has published this content via Domesday Reloaded, a website designed and created by Aerian Studios.

Although it appears quite simple, the thought process behind its design was not without its difficulties. We had to create an easy to use interface for a website that consisted of millions of files sourced from all over the country. The solution to this was to implement a simple mapping system that users could search and find the relative D-block. We also wanted users to be able to browse all articles available within a D-block with ease, this involved displaying an image carousel to house all picture entries and a list of all written articles, that if new were tagged with a date mark.

As with all our BBC projects we take the upmost care to stick to the guidelines given in BBC GEL, a framework that incorporates the use of a 61 x 16 pixel grid and set of ground level brand and styling rules.

Do check out some of the great press coverage for Domesday Reloaded. There's some fantastic stories contained within those D-blocks, and the love and care the project has been handled with is a credit to everyone involved.