The skilled guided hikers from Rainforest Guided Hiking Tours located in Victoria and Sooke, BC, contacted Inktvis Creative to help design and develop their first website for their new hiking company.
Co-owner, Rachel, had some amazing photographs for us to work with, making this website truly unique and creative.
We had a great time working with them and we look forward to producing a video for them in the near future.
We are pleased to announce the latest website design and development created for Markus’ Wharfside Restaurant.
Markus and Tatum gave Inktvis Creative free reign over their new design. They had their existing site for many years and they felt that it needed a new update to look and function. They needed a website that reflected their quality of food and service, having won many awards over the last few years.
We look forward to working with Markus and the team to maintain their brand consistency in the future. Please visit their website at
We are pleased to announce the completion of the new Sooke Fine Arts website. We were contacted by the Sooke Fine Arts Council to help re-brand and update their existing website. We had some existing print marketing materials and used those for inspiration towards the final design of this website, to keep the brand consistent.
Here is the screen capture of the website.
“The Sooke Fine Arts Show provides the opportunity for both well-known and emerging artists from Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands to showcase their work. Along with the 7,500 annual visitors who attend the art show, the show draws hundreds of art patrons from British Columbia, and throughout western Canada and the United States.
Sooke is steeped in artistic talent and natural beauty, making it the perfect host for the premier juried art show on Vancouver Island. 2010 provides an opportunity to enjoy the twenty-fourth year of the Sooke Fine Arts Show, and its fourth year under the sponsorship of the Sooke Fine Arts Society.
Plan your visit to Sooke Fine Arts Show 2010 now. The show opens to the public on Saturday, July 24, 2010 at ten in the morning, and runs through Monday, August 2.”
Yesterday the wind picked up, the waves increased size and the sun was setting at 9pm. I knew I wanted to head back to Otter Point, just a short drive from Sooke, BC on Vancouver Island.
The cloud formations were amazing and the waves were crashing into the rocks.
I was shooting towards the west, trying to get some great wave breaks when I happened to look over my shoulder and spotted not one, but two ends of rainbows entering the ocean. I quickly packed up my gear and ran across the rocks to try to capture the light before it disappeared. I managed to fire a few shots off before it disappeared into thin air.
Please enjoy a few of the captures that I thought stood out amongst the group of them.
We are proud to announce the launch of Rain Fores Hiking Guided Tours, a new company started by Rachel and Toni, from Sooke and Victoria, BC respectively.
Rachel and Toni approached Inktvis Creative after seeing our website design portfolio. They like the style of our “themed” websites and after seeing our Discover Sooke design, knew we were the company to develop their new company website.
They allowed the Inktvis Creative to work their magic by giving them initial insight for their design wishes, but ultimately left it up to us to best represent the way they should be seen on the internet. We were fortunate to be able to work with the photos Rachel had taken over the years to use in the interface. Rachel has some of the nicest photos of this area and is quite the photographer. She knows how to capture the beauty of this area we play in.
It was an absolute pleasure to work closely with these two great guides and I know they will succeed in which they love to do.
If you ever want to explore the Southern Vancouver Island area and see some of the best kept secrets with a couple of safe, knowledgeable, and experienced hiking guides, please contact them today.
After having bought a new camera towards the end of last year, proud to say a shiny black Canon 5D MKII, I’ve actually managed to get out twice now to take some photos and learn how to use it.
The first one was taken at Creyke Point, which is just off Aylard Farm in East Sooke Park. About 20 minutes drive from Victoria, BC.
I thought the small path leading up to the ledge with tree made this photo what it is.
And the next photo was taken near Otter Point, dragging my shutter for approximately 1.5 seconds. It started to rain at this point and I didn’t have as long as I would have liked at this spot. I shot this with the 24-105L lens that I got with the camera. I really miss my Sigma 10-20 which I cannot use on this camera because it’s a full frame sensor, unlike my XTi. I’ll be saving my pennies for the 17-40 I do believe.
We are proud to announce that after thousands of entries for the BCAA 2010 calendar, Jason van der Valk, graphic designer and founder of Inktvis Creative, was selected as one of the winners for his photo entitled “Sheringham Lighthouse” and is featured on the July 2010 page.
Of course upon hearing of this news, we ran out and scooped up as many calendars as we could, so we apologize if you can’t find one. You’ll just have to take our word for it or take a peek at the photo below, showing his photo placed in the calendar.
This is great news not only for Inktvis Creative and Jason van der Valk, but great news for the Sooke area as this helps to showcase what a beautiful place we live in and shows other people across BC some of the sites around Sooke and what they can expect to see when choosing our little town for their next vacation.
Here is the photo of this years BCAA calendar and Jason’s winning photo featured on the July page.
LeSooke Spa in Sooke, BC contacted Inktvis Creative looking for some new photos of the interior of their high-end spa for use on their website and new print advertising they will be doing in the upcoming months.
Owner, Michelle Bohn, had seen the photography work of Inktvis Creative’s graphic designer, Jason van der Valk and asked if we could come in for a couple of hours and take photos. Bringing along our Canon SLR Digital Camera, 10-20mm wide angle lens and tripod with shutter release switch, this enabled us to take photos of smaller areas, fitting most of the rooms in the frame as well as low light conditions. Perfect equipment to use for business location photography.
The beauty of natural light, coupled with low light and wooden floors and walls made for some very nice relaxing spa images, perfect for any advertising that LeSooke Spa may need, both in print and for web.
Once we were done on location, we brought home all the RAW photo files and went through and touched up, edited and presented LeSooke Spa with a CD of images they could use for years to come.
Michelle send us a lovely email stating..
“i love them! Thank you so much, looks great”
Below are just a small sample of the many photos that we took on location at LeSooke Spa in Sooke.
A lot of clients expect that once their website is done and online, they can just sit back and wait for the clients to filter through their virtual door. This isn’t always the case, especially since most businesses are competing with other businesses who have been utilizing the internet and their websites for years before you. It also takes time before you can expect decent search results, and even then you need to ensure you are working the full potential of your website or you are not fully utilizing the benefits of having a website.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is something that takes time and money. There isn’t one easy thing any company can do to make your website appear in the top 10 search results on major search engines, but there are a few things that you can do on your own time to help get your website noticed, ranked and to drive more traffic to your online business without needing to involve or pay your website development company.
Inktvis Creative always develops and designs their clients websites with SEO in mind, ensuring that the website has effective and eye catching designs, proper and easy navigation for people visiting your website and proper coding is used in creating your online business, but that isn’t always enough. So what can you do for your website?
Here are 7 effective ways to market your website online.
1. Using Twitter, Facebook and other Social Media websites.
Create a Facebook Fan page and invite all your friends. When you add a new product, service or have something worthy of letting people know, discuss this or put a new topic on your business Facebook page. Create a Twitter account with your business name, follow and friend like minded companies. Reach out, learn and retweet interesting things in your industry. This helps to get your business out there. Be active.
2. Video
Creating video these days is relatively inexpensive. You can pick up a nice video camera, great for online use for as little as a couple of hundred dollars. With free video hosting sites such as YouTube, you don’t need to worry about paying for bandwidth. Create a YouTube account with your business name and upload video featuring your products or talk about your products on camera and how they can benefit your target audience.
Don’t forget to follow other YouTube users. Following creates followers. And if you comment on video, you also create a link to your channel, increasing your chance of getting followed and noticed.
3. Blogs and Forums
Similar to social networks, blogs and forums are a great place to take part in creating a dialogue. You want to be resourceful, really help people, and provide valuable information in order to gain the maximum benefits of these mediums. Don’t forget to create a signature with your user account and have a link to your website in the signature. Search Engines like Google index forum pages and having your website link in your signature only adds to more online pages getting indexed.
4. Press Releases
A great way to gain new customers is by creating press releases about your services, products, or business. Try and stay away from highly commercial
press releases that simply show your company in a positive light. Instead, focus on a unique angle that will draw visitors’ attention to something you are doing or an interesting aspect of your business.
5. Email Newsletters
Create an email list, capture peoples emails from your website who might be interested in receiving an email newsletter from you with latest news, products or just explain what has happened in your company for the last month. This is a great way to get your business out there and with websites like Constant Contact, this is an easy and inexpensive way to create an email newsletter.
6. Contests and Giveaways
To be successful with contests and giveaways, you need to give people things that are valuable and relate to your business or industry. The great thing about contests is that you can give your own products away and your only out-of-pocket expense will be your hard costs for the product(s)
Promote these contests on Facebook, Twitter, Newsletters or your Blogs.
7. Create a Blog
One of the most beneficial and inexpensive ways to promote your site online is by creating a blog that compliments your business’ services and products. Not only does it give a chance for you to talk about new happenings in your industry, but it allows you to start connecting with people on your site – where you can promote your own business as much as you want.
You can either build your blog right into your website, which can be a little more time consuming and costly, or you can start your own blog and link that to your business website, for Free. You can use WordPress (my favourite and there are thousands of templates), Blogger or TypePad for examples. Vox is another great community blog. The best thing about blogs is it’s like a mini-website that you can easily add photos, video and text whenever you want.
The one thing that is common to all of these 7 ideas is time and effort. If you don’t, and you just sit back hoping the investment into your website is just going to work, you’ll come up short, unless you have thousands of dollars and use traditional print methods. All of these things take time and effort, but it can be fun and it’s rewarding seeing your time pay off.
There are other things you can do as well and if you have any questions or comments, please feel free and send us an email. We would love to assist you and try to help you out in any way that we can.
Inktvis Creative was asked to help assist in the marketing of the new “Sooke Adventure Centre” located at the Sooke Harbour Resort and Marina, off West Coast Rd. The Sooke Adventure Centre is based around 4 companies that are located and run out of the resort.
Sooke Coastal Explorations, Sooke’s only whale watching company, West Coast Outdoor Adventure Rentals, which rents out Hobie Inflatable Kayaks for use around the Sooke waterways, as well as bicycle rentals and a Satellite store for Eagle Eye Outfitters, which offers fishing gear and tackle. Inktvis Gallery and Studio is also located on site and features the work of local Sooke Photographers Jason van der Valk and Mary Waskul.
This new website is to act as a “launching page” for the 4 businesses. It’s a small website that leads the viewer to the appropriate company website to obtain more information on one of these services that are located at the Sooke Harbour Resort and Marina.
Inktvis Creative also supplied local photography for the walls of the adventure centre.
