An innovative Penryn-based digital start-up has finally gone fully live this month, after several years of meticulous planning and development.

Pixxcell is a free and easy to use storytelling platform, which allows users to create maps of destinations and journeys around the globe. The ambitious start-up is the brain-child of founder and CEO, Melissa Mercer, and is based at Tremough Innovation Centre.

Melissa, an avid adventure traveller with a background in editing natural history programmes for the BBC, relaunched Pixxcell after improvements were made to an earlier version and a soft launch phase was completed.

She said: “We are thrilled to unveil Pixxcell – which we think of as the world’s first time travelling atlas of human curiosity. Our talented team of developers have worked incredibly hard to bring this concept to life; it’s fantastic to see users begin to embrace it.”

Pixxcell’s content curators have been busy putting together stories to demonstrate the abilities of the new platform, including The Poldark Tour of Cornwall, which shows locations referenced in the original Poldark books, as well as those used in the hit BBC TV series.

The launch has generated a wave of excitement in a number of sectors, with international brands, museums and educational institutions, photographers and travel writers all keen to use Pixxcell to engage their audience in a new way, and show off their unique content.

The platform’s versatility is one of its most important attributes - maps can be created with the user’s own images (Facebook, Instagram, Google+ and Flickr can all be linked), and any from the world’s largest digital archive - Getty Images.

The maps can be saved and shared, and embedded into websites and blogs. Pixxcell maps are set to become a regular feature of online visual storytelling and new-generation social media. All individual images will also be compiled into a central world archive to create “a visual visitor’s book for planet earth.”

Pixxcell received seed funding from both national and international investors as well as local business support. "We have benefited from the support of Plymouth University’s GAIN20 Network, Unlocking Potential, Oxford Innovation and the business community here at Tremough," said Melissa. "Cornwall is a great place to call home for an enterprise like ours.”

To start your own story map, visit pixxcell.com or follow /PixxcellWorldwide on Facebook and @Pixxcell on Twitter.