Exhibition design specialists Metaphor developed the design for the 35 permanent galleries in the new Ashmolean, creating the visual look and the means of storytelling in all the galleries.

Good storytelling and great design is what creates a memorable visitor experience.

As the displays in the galleries thread through the building, they take the visitor on a journey around the ancient world and across several continents, from Europe into the world of Islam and on to China and Japan.

This world tour embodies the Ashmolean’s redisplay philosophy, ‘Crossing Cultures, Crossing Time’, which makes the connections between cultures and epochs.

London-based Metaphor has been involved in this project since the concept stage and has designed all the new showcases, their displays, the graphic language and the overall art direction. In so doing they have resolved a wide range of challenges from conservation to design aesthetics.

The requirements at the Ashmolean were daunting — 39 new galleries were needed, containing 430 custom showcases, each with its own conservation requirements.

Added to this was the need to satisfy a wide variety of interested parties, such as the curators, patrons, architects, the Heritage Lottery Fund and future audiences. The elegant new building by Rick Mather Architects raises the aesthetic game for everything that is placed within it, calling for a sensitive design approach. Metaphor’s role required multiple skills, as interior architect, designer, storyteller, scriptwriter, scenographer, window dresser and diplomat.

The Ashmolean often contains more objects in a single gallery than in an entire blockbuster art exhibition.

By contrast, art museums have very few objects, often individually spot-lit, within large open galleries.

In a museum each object must be carefully presented for visitors to enjoy them to the full and lighting is key — hence in the Ashmolean’s displays the lighting of objects comes to the fore.

Despite their numbers, each object is given the beautiful presentation it deserves.

The opening of the new Ashmolean, says Metaphor director Stephen Greenberg, is the start of a journey.

Over the years, change will come to the building and to the galleries as new curators arrive and fresh acquisitions and discoveries are made.

New interpretation devices, such as mobile phone ‘apps’ or tablet PCs, may be introduced in the future to enrich the visitors’ discovery of objects.

The new Ashmolean has been designed to adapt to these changes as far as possible.

Metaphor (www.metaphor.eu) also works with many museums around the world, including the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul and the new Grand Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

From the outset Metaphor wanted the Ashmolean with its new extension to become ‘not just the best university museum in the world, but one of the great museums’.

Judging by the reception it has received in the last few days it has every chance of succeeding.