At Quirke, we love what good design can do:

when integrated with smart technology,
customers just smile more. Don't you find?

Hunter Industries, based in San Marcos, California, is one of the world’s leading irrigation companies with $240 million in sales and with operations in North America, Europe and Asia. Founded in 1981, the company pioneered in- ground irrigation technology. Over the past 30 years it has expanded its product line to over 1,000 items and grown beyond landscape irrigation into outdoor lighting and custom plastic molding.

Working with the Hunter in-house design team, George Allen had the role of “Design Director” on the project responsible for overseeing overall strategic and design direction and monitoring day-to-day design development.

Front-end research and liaison with senior management and the design team was provided by an initial site visit. Subsequently, work was conducted remotely via video conference, email, shared server access and a follow-up site visit to present design solutions.

Quirke was also commissioned to create a short video to accompany the new identity materials and reinforce the company’s brand values.

All brands and identities evolve so we look forward to continued involvement with Hunter.

Fairway Market has grown from a small family business to one of Vancouver Island’s largest independently owned grocery stores with 10 locations on the island.

Renowned for their community engagement, commitment to local food sourcing, competitive pricing and the depth of their ethnic product lines, Fairway still faced increasing price and product competition from both major chain grocers and new upstarts.

We were brought in to refresh the brand and provide a foundation for greater marketing focus through the redesign of a wide range of brand touchpoints including a new logo/wordmark, shopping bags, product labels, interior and exterior store signage, delivery vehicles, advertising and electronic gift cards.

Brand management
Visual identity design system
Logo redesign
Advertising
Shopping bag design
Sticker design
Delivery vehicle identity design
Environmental design
In-store poster design
Electronic gift card design
Production management

French Mint offers hands-on cooking classes in the art of French cooking. Proprietor and chef Denise Marchessault hired Quirke to take over her website maintenance and implement design enhancements. It was easy to say yes, especially when the request was accompanied by delicious gougères.

We began with a website analysis and audited the information architecture, design system, content management system, code and database. And the nearly 1000 images in the archive.

We also presented a series of wireframes and grid-based design suggestions to improve the site’s usability. Many of these changes are now in place, including integration with Twitter, Facebook, and Issuu.

We were fortunate to collaborate with Caroline West Photography. Do check out her work. Her warm and intimate images are featured on the home page and are sprinkled throughout the site.

Website analysis
Business analysis
Information architecture
Wireframe designs
Design compositions
XHTML CSS JavaScript
Website maintenance

The Dragon Boat Festival is one of Victoria’s largest annual cultural and sporting events, attracting teams from across Canada and the United States and drawing an audience of more then 90,000 people over the 3-day event.

The festival is also a major fundraiser on behalf of the BC Cancer Society through the event's Lights of Courage lantern campaign.

Our creative management of the brand has included support for the festival’s media launch, gala dinner and many aspects of the 3-day festival itself.

This included a logo redesign, annual program guides, sponsor packages, race guides, apparel designs, gala dinner menus, posters, event advertising, site access passes and on-site banner flags.

Our strategic perspective and high creative standards ensured an effective festival presence and maximum sponsor value.

View the press release for more information.

Brand management
Event advertising
Logo redesign
Sponsorship package design
Annual program guide
Race guide
Festival Banners
Apparel design
Event posters
Production management

We created a Tuberculosis Guide for Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH) to help those with tuberculosis manage their disease and prevent its spread to others.

The document was made as accessible as possible through the use of simple language and extensive use of visuals in support of most text points. The design was produced to facilitate print, desktop and electronic output. A simplified color scheme reduced print costs. In addition to English, a robust, simple layout supported the translation of the piece into eight languages.

Health guide design
Illustration design
Production management

St. Margaret's School for girls is the oldest, continuously operating, independent, day and boarding school on Vancouver Island.

As an all-girls school with a compelling founding story and a rich heritage of quality education, it found itself being outspent and out-marketed by rival independent schools in the pursuit of new students.

Because the school could not necessarily outspend other schools, it needed to leverage its considerable assets in a more strategic and focused way.

Quirke's first project for St. Margaret's was an Annual Giving Campaign solicitation mailer that would turn heads and cast the school as different and innovative, qualities it saw as fundamental to building its brand and attracting students.

Annual giving campaign
Project management
Graphic design
Information design
Competitive research
Vendor management

Production management

Quirke’s new logo and wordmark for Ansuz Productions debuted at the Montreal World Film Festival. We quickly followed up with business cards and a one-page microsite to highlight the premiere festival screening of Among Friends. View trailer.

Anyone viewing this short-lived site may have noticed we incorporated the @font-face feature of CSS3 (Cascading Style Sheet 3). It's a beautiful little bit of front-end coding that allows designers to include non-standard fonts on the web. It’s actually made the web feel more like the world of print.

Anyone with older browsers (and maybe even those of you with Internet Explorer) would have seen a sans serif font substituted. For the rest of you, it's good-bye Arial, hello open source fonts.

Ansuz Productions – v2.0

After Ansuz set up shop in Vancouver we worked with them to create a more robust website design and promotional material below. This included a new content management system (CMS) with client-specified dimensions that best-suited for an audience with mid-size screens such as laptops and tablets.

Business analysis
Logo design
Wordmark design
Visual identity design
Wireframe designs
Design compositions
Website design
Favicon
Domain management
XHTML CSS
Content management system
Film poster design
Visit website 2.0

Every Reason Not To Run is a brand and identity concept we created for a senior management consultant who also specialized in motivating corporate and tech sector audiences.

The current brand had evolved and a new motivational topic, a new book, and a new website was in order.

During our discovery phase – beginning with conversations and shared storytelling – we uncovered and acted upon an insight that led to shaping a unique brand story easily positioned to sprint ahead of other speakers and coaches in the motivation market.

Because the consultant was an experienced marathon runner, we suggested channeling her passion for long distance running – and every reason not to run – into her motivational topic. Everything else clicked into place. A business concept, a name, an idea for a book, and a website purpose.

When we riffed on the visual idea of linking a runner's number tag to the countless number of excuses we all have for not doing what we know we should be doing, countless merchandise and apparel options began to take shape.

Brand strategy
Business analysis
Visual identity design
Wordmark
Marketing approach
Photo concepts
Information architecture
Web design
Copy

Caite Dheere is a visual artist painting with encaustic medium – an aromatic fusion of oil pigments, damar resin, and beeswax. Her work is featured in collections in Canada, France, and the US. She is represented by Polychrome Fine Arts in Victoria, BC and Art Interiors in Toronto, Ontario.

For this full-service project, we created a graceful wordmark and identity design system, including business cards and letterhead, that harmonized with Caite's visual style. We supplemented this with customized Microsoft Office templates for artist statements, gallery documents, and proposal submissions.

For the website design, we went with a clean and spacious approach that focuses on the work and the photography. After the successful launch we created an ongoing email marketing campaign. We continue to update the site with custom announcements and invites whenever Caite has a new show.

Wordmark design
Identity design
Exhibition poster designs
Email marketing campaigns
Analytics
Information architecture
Wireframes
Design compositions
Website design
Favicon
Photography
XHTML CSS JavaScript
Visit website