Fostering Community with This is East Van 2

This is East Van Mintage Window

I was honored when Erin Sinclair from THIS IS EAST VAN approached 32spokes Web Design to help with the second volume of THIS IS EAST VAN. When I first submitted to the THIS IS EAST VAN project, I thought it was pretty cool. It was something that brought me back to why I love photography: it’s how I tell stories.

There are few calls for submissions that I take the time to participate in. THIS IS EAST VAN (thanks Erin and Rob you guys rock) is one of the best that I have ever been involved with.

PS: East Vancouver is a community that I love and has fostered much of my growth in recent years. Partnering as a sponsor with the TIEV project is a natural for 32spokes Web Design.

Bike to Work Week

32spokes Web Design is proud to participate in the first ever Sunshine Coast Bike to Work Week! As our name indicates, we are as passionate about cycling as we are about the web.

Even though we probably won’t be biking in three-piece business suits, we’ve decided to name our team Spokes and Attire to pay homage to all cycling co-commuters. We’re stoked that our contractor Greg Burnison recently joined the team and want to invite you to join our team, too.

Bike to Work BC is a registered non-profit that encourages people in all BC communities to experience the health and safety of commuting by bicycle. Check out the list of events happening across the coast this week and look for us there. Or get involved by registering your own workplace team–registration is still open.

Our commute might be a short one–a distance of 2.3 km–and we would be commuting by bicycle even if it wasn’t Bike to Work Week, but participating in this community event is a great way to endorse the joy of cycling on the coast.

Update: The spokes and Attire team cycled a total of 128.8 and placing 4th in the mini category. It would have been higher, but Robert had to go to Vancouver for meetings and begrudgingly took transit instead of his bike. Both Greg and Robert loved being part of the first ever Sunshine Coast Bike to Work Week.

More than just a business card

Our Mobile QR Code

Here at 32spokes, we write a lot of custom HTML & CSS. Recently though, we tried our hand at a different type of code—QR or Quick Response code.

A QR code is a small black and white pattern similar to a barcode that can be photographed and read by your average cellphone camera. It’s one way to quickly transfer information, such as phone numbers or map coordinates, to anyone who takes a photo of the barcode.

The first time we saw these neat little codes was during an art opening for photographer Ron Laufer at Kafka’s Coffee and Tea. Ron had the usual nameplates accompanying his photos, but he added a QR code beneath each title. It was like an Easter egg hunt for related content; when photographed by a cellphone some of the codes took the user to a YouTube video, others went to a news article or a Google map showing the place the photo was taken. QR codes were quite a hit at the opening.

Our brand new business cards have QR codes on the back

According to Wikipedia, QR codes were created by Denso-Wave (a Toyota subsidiary) in 1994, but Toyota has since decided to forego the patent and make the software free to all users. We’re quite the fans of all things open source, so we decided to pat Toyota on the back and make our own QR code for the back of our brand spanking new business cards.

These mini cards are so easy to moo-ve...

We also just made some moo mini cards. We love these wee cards when we’re cycling because they are so small, they have just the right amount of information and are easy to carry in our moo mini card keychain holder (see right). 

These are just two examples of how we are on the cutting edge of neat marketing initiatives. Be sure to hit us up for a mini card or go on an QR code treasure hunt of your own.

Spoken Word

Hello and welcome to 32spokes web design. We are a web design company with offices in Sechelt, BC and Vancouver, BC. We’re here to help you get your website in gear and help you engage with your customers on the internet.

Our name comes from our love of cycling and how we approach building sites for the internet. Find out more about our process via our “about” page.

We’d like to send out some props to people and companies who have helped us launch:

• Helena Rae and Dandy Graphics. She took our ideas and analogies of a bicycle hub and its redundancy of multiple spokes around the hub that provides strength and backup and came up with this simple yet brilliant logo. We could not be happier with her work and involvement.
• Artist Jana Curll who gave us our own twitter bird on a unicycle. We needed something that both went with our colour scheme and was still fun and cheerful. She came up with this sketch and we just loved it.
• Andy Clark Vancouver based Reuters Photographer for our 404 page image from Velodrome at the 2000 Sydney Summer Olympics.
• Bikes on the Drive whose tree bike was our first contract – even before we were a company – and was the inspiration behind our name and mantra.
• Our hosting provider site5 whose robust equipment is only matched by their amazing customer service.
• Matt and the entire WordPress Core team. You have made the internet a whole lot easier to use.

Thanks for stopping by! if you would like to give us some feedback drop us a line via our contact page or via our twitter account.