During my 13-odd years as a teacher at Weston Agricultural College, I designed and printed flyers, tour brochures, sports programmes, orders of service, letterheads, certificates and similar printed material for the school. Since this was not part of my normal job description, although of use to the school, I liked the idea of a little reminder of the creative input and time spent on these items appearing somewhere on the printed page. I worked mostly late at night, on my own time, so as not to interfere with my official duties. In the early years, I stayed in a school hostel. The barn owls nesting in the roof used to keep me company into the early hours. The idea of being a nightowl, with all its implications, seemed to fit. Factor in that my heritage is German-speaking South African, and the logo and name I chose for my little "reminder" was an owl flying over trees in front of a full moon, with the words Nachteule Entwurf underneath.
Time marched on, and the Internet became the "happening" concept in the late 1990’s. Soon after Weston got "connected", I put forward the idea that Weston needed a presence on the world-wide web. It would be a way for Old Boys to stay in touch with the school, parents to keep up with events and a showcase to prospective parents and the general public for this special school in the Midlands.
I started to dabble in web page design and soon I managed to expand and adapt the original three-page web site and it grew rapidly. By April 2004, the web site had more than 150 individual pages with over 1 300 photographs and images (almost all pictures that I took or created and supplied). The web site had grown to take up over 45Mb of disk space.
My tenure at Weston ended at the end of March 2004, but I continued to administer the web site. For the remainder of 2004, the school’s public relations department provided me with new information for the site. Finally, in January 2005, I handed over the web site to Weston, and all my involvement with the site ended. The school has since launched a new web site.
I was honoured when my new school, Deutsche Schule Hermannsburg, asked me to take on the task of maintaining the school web site shortly after my arrival. And so a second project began. If you feel any information is missing or needs updating, or would like to see any part of the site expanded, please contact the public relations office at Hermannsburg at pro@hmbschool.co.za. All positive input is appreciated.
I work mostly at home, using a freeware text editor (to create and write the HTML code for the web pages) and various graphics applications to design and process the graphics. I still work late at night on occasion. As the web site grows, it becomes more and more challenging to keep up to date with all the little tidbits of information one has to chase after to keep everyone informed about their particular interest in the school.
Nevertheless, the work continues … I hope you enjoy browsing the web site.
Lothar Witthöft |
