Sion Hill
Website design and build and photography
Dominican College Sion Hill is a voluntary secondary school for girls. Established in 1836, and based in Blackrock Co Dublin, Sion Hill is one of the oldest girls’ secondary schools in Ireland. However their approach to education is far from old, based on the Dominican ideal of developing the whole person means they are one of the most sought after schools in the country and produce exceptionally high leaving cert grades each year.
When it came to designing their new website it was very important to show how progressive and unique a school Sion Hill is. This was done by showing the diversity of the school population and showing them in different scenarios throughout their school day. For this project I undertook the photography myself and moved through the school, meeting with and chatting to teachers and pupils to try and capture them as I found them, whether on the playing pitches, in conversation in the corridors as they rushed from class to class or playing an instrument in the music room. It was easy to show the girls at their best as they genuinely enjoyed their school day.
The school really wanted to show the exceptional comments from the Department of Education’s ‘Whole School Evaluation’ programme, so I created a ‘slide show’ of the very complimentary quotes. The quotes fade in over the home page main banner and they help to reinforce the ethos of the school.
Testimonial
“Ona designed and built our wonderful web site. Her enthusiasm and dedication to the task was amazing. Ona did a full two days photography to photograph the students enjoying their school day and that really brought out the personality of the students and captured the school spirit on the web site. She worked with us closely, listening to our needs and coming up with solutions and new ideas to help us. Throughout the project, she kept us informed of progress and we were able to see everything on a private server so that on publication day, the site just magically appeared, completely finished. She was a pleasure to work with from beginning to end.”
SHEILA DRUMM,
School Principal, Sion Hill College
