19 June, 2019

The Sam Maguire Passport was officially launched on Wednesday, May 22, at Páirc Uí Chaoimh by chairperson of Cork GAA Tracy Kennedy, and supported by the CIT students who designed it! 

Having successfully completed the installation of the Sam Maguire Community Bells in St Mary’s Church, Dunmanway, where Sam is buried, Reverend Cliff Jeffers and Dunmanway Chamber of Commerce set about promoting the town and its many attractions.

Following the excellent work of CIT placement student John Power last year, Rev Jeffers reached out to Visual Communication students in CIT CCAD to design a Sam Maguire Passport to encourage tourists to visit sights associated with Sam Maguire in West Cork.

The Visual Communication students visited the proposed Sam Maguire Passport Trail, devised clues and designed the layout. They then presented their work to Rev Jeffers who selected the winning passport design, created by Bartosz Gruba, Ciara O’Driscoll and Sabdh Ní Fhaitheartaigh.

The groups presented 8 different concepts to the members of the Dunmanway Community Tourism Initiative. The main judging criteria for the passports were that they encourage their audience to visit Dunmanway & entice them to learn more about Sam Maguire, who he was, what he stood for and where he came from. The passport needed to engage its audience with a strong visual theme tying these together, facilitating a visitor guide with audience tested challenges for the 7 primary locations that feature in the passport.

The winning concept design (under 12’s passport) stood out as the participant is brought through a journey told by an illustrated character of Sam himself, giving a strong visual reference to the man behind the cup. The content & challenges were best matched with the intended audience. The second place design (under 18’s passport) presented a contemporary visual reference to working in a post office at the time when Sam worked in the UK, which was both historical & modern in its presentation. And the third place passport design (Seniors Passport) represented an old scrapbook look & feel with well-considered & researched challenges that culminated as a historic visual representation of Sam’s story in Dunmanway.