When long-standing client St David’s Marist Inanda approached us to rebuild its website, we were thrilled. Flow has well-established relationships with some of Johannesburg’s best schools, which include St David’s. In the past, we’ve put together school magazines and social media campaigns for St David’s, and produced a beautiful hardcover book for the school, marking its then 75 years of its history.
The website needed to be functional and modern, but also needed to house a wealth of information about its history, news, and information about the pre-primary, preparatory and high schools. The website is also home to a sport portal, a business directory and a donation portal.
Flow senior digital designer Calvin Milazi was tasked with designing the new website shortly after joining Flow. “It was a great opportunity for me to entrench myself within the design team and to work with the development team. It was exciting designing a website for a school like St David’s, with its unique culture and rich diversity. In fact, if anything, this was my rite of passage into Flow,” he says.
Project manager Ros Caboz adds: “We’re very happy with the outcome of the site, which is beautifully designed, neat, organised and easy to navigate. The back end was built using Craft 3, which makes it easy for the school staff to keep the content current by doing their own uploads.”
Calvin says, “Looking at the final product, I believe we designed and brought to life something beautiful that the school can be proud of and improve on in the future. From the content, project management and design teams to the development team, I’m positive we’re all happy and satisfied.”
St David’s head of advancement Lara Klement agrees: “St David’s Marist Inanda is very proud of our new website developed by Flow. We are thoroughly enjoying how uncluttered and simple to navigate the site is – it has a vibrant and contemporary ‘look and feel’, which reflects our desire to be seen as a school that is innovative, relevant and child-centred.
“The visuals and content reflect our ethos, values and offering without overwhelming the visitor with too much information. Our website is the platform from which to access a number of other sites and platforms, and the transition between these is seamless. The back end of the website is user friendly, and the built-in functionality ensures that the design remains consistent even if we load new pages or content, which makes it a pleasure to work on.”
Lara says the prolonged national lockdown owing to Covid-19 was a challenging time for all organisations and it highlighted the need to have a strong online presence. “We were very happy to end a difficult year with a beautiful new website that set the tone for a refresh of our marketing and communications strategy, which reflects the need to be increasingly agile, flexible and creative in our online engagements with our current and potential stakeholders.”
Ros adds, “It’s always such a pleasure to work with St David’s Marist Inanda. Flow has a long-standing relationship with the St David’s team – from producing their 75-year commemorative book and annual yearbooks to matric results social media coverage. We’re always proud to be associated with the school.”