Blind Channel Resort
Located on West Thurlow Island, on the west coast of British Columbia, Blind Channel Resort is a family-owned and operated full service marina, and resort.
I worked my first season with this resort in 2017, and noticed they were in need of a graphic designer, and the following work is a showcase of some of the pieces created over the years.
A Little Bit About Them
The resort is owned by the Richter family, who bought the resort in 1970, and have lived there ever since.
Nestled in the wilderness of the West Coast, the resort is best known for its delicious food, excellent staff and service, beautiful views, unique and creative artwork, and extraordinary experiences. With a full-service marina and resort, and a water taxi charter service, they are a well known stop for boaters heading to and from Alaska.
Their Branding Identity
Showcases their values of family, and community. It focuses on simplicity, the nature of the west coast and casual elegance.
Their Target Market
The demographic that makes up most of the visitors at Blind Channel are retired, own a boat, are Canadian, or visiting from the US.
People come to Blind Channel for the escape from reality, and to reconnect with like-minded people while exploring the west coast. These people are generally wealthy and they value good service, and experiences. Some people initially visit Blind Channel Resort out of necessity, because it’s one of the only places to restock between Campbell River and Port Hardy. Most customers, once they come to Blind Channel, return every season just for the ambience. This demographic is incredibly loyal, as long as their needs are meet, and their experiences continue to be enjoyable.
Business Cards and Promotional Material
Every year, Blind Channel donates a gift card to the Stuart Island Salmon Enhancement Auction, and this is the gift card I created for them last season.
In early 2019, I re-designed their business cards, they wanted a clean, elegant and modern look. One of the most important parts of the redesign is that even though they would have a dual-sided card, there must be space to write down information for the customer.
In the summer of 2019, I designed some ads and some promotional signage for Blind Channel Resort. Two of the ads were focused on advertising the marina and the resort to be posted in a tidal book Port and Passes, and the Waggoner’s Cruising Guidebook, an extremely popular book among the boating community. The signage was more focused on Blind Channel’s water taxi charter service.
In early 2020 I designed a T-shirt for Blind Channel to celebrate their 50th anniversary.
Posters
Every summer Blind Channel Resort is host to many different events. This includes music night buffets, Cruise and Dine events, Canada Day and Father’s Day celebrations, and wine tastings.
These are advertised in print and one social media. (They have a Facebook page and an Instagram account.) Posters once printed are displayed in their store, fuel shed and other nearby marinas.
Interactive Menu
In 2018, I decided to make this interactive menu for the Cedar Post Inn, during a Javascript project. The inspiration came to me when I noticed that a lot of food delivery apps where sorting items out by dietary needs, and I thought that was a really smart idea considering that when I serve in the restaurant over half the questions I get are “Is this vegetarian”. I sorted out all of the menu items tagging them with all the commonly found diets I could think of. This allows people to select their diet, and it shows them all the items that they can eat.
In real life this wouldn’t be realistic for Blind Channel because their menu changes every few days, sometimes daily during the busy season.
Ch
Menus
One of the many elements that make Blind Channel Resort so popular is the fine dining. Cedar Post Inn was operated by Annemarie Richter for many years. Her authentic German recipes are still served today, along with some fantastic fresh seafood dishes.
The restaurant is open from mid-May to late September, and is a friendly open space featuring natural cedar posts, gallery-lit art by Annemarie, and overlooks the channel. In the busier months serves breakfast, lunch and happy hour along with regular dinner service.
These are the menus I made for the 2019 summer season. I separated the designs into two tones, a semi-casual menu, and a formal menu. The semi-casual menu is used for the breakfast menu, lunch, and happy hour. The formal menu is used for dinner service, and includes an extensive drink menu and wine list, a feature menu and a regular dishes menu.
These menus change every few days, as the chef or servers add new specials and entreés. I made these into easy-to-change templates in Indesign, so I didn’t have to remake them every time.
Once I got feedback on my wireframes, I moved on to creating an interactive prototype. This prototype outlines what the general design will be on my site. I found this design changed as I developed the live site and that some of the design choices made were no longer a viable option and I went in a different design direction.