Painted faux stone arch detail, Pittsburgh, a photo by John Hiemstra on Flickr.

“Final final” picture of the faux stone painting project I completed earlier this year in the Point Breeze neighborhood of Pittsburgh. This image shows some of the more detailed stone blocks, properly befitting the main entrance of the home :) and the “faux grout” treatment I added, using a custom mix of sand, paint, glue and the like. If you saw the “before” pictures of this job, you will recall that the stone “blocks” are three dimensional, carved in to this surface; my “grout” gently fills the incisions in the same way as real grout would with real stone block.

This was a fun small business website to build because the service is cool, the story of the company is cool, and my client, A1 Pittsburgh leader Ryan Perkins, is cool, too :)
 
What A1 Concrete Leveling has done for thousands of clients saves time, money, inconvenience AND is a huge boon for the environment-- anyone who knows my hangups with efficiency and green design and green practices in the analog end of things can appreciate how much I appreciate these guys.

Ryan’s vision was to better tell the story of A1′s unique patented equipment, process and benefits while at the same time streamlining the flow of information involved in the estimating, communicating, delivering and billing cycle.

So my work not only addressed the fundamentals of keyword research, optimized taxonomy, and design improvements with continuity from their earlier site and print materials. We also created the social media integration of the site as a workflow pathway that we’ll develop further later this year.

A1 also has one of my first custom Facebook pages using the new iframe capabilities Facebook implemented in March 2011. If you “like” the A1 Concrete Facebook page, you can also see the first of a few jobsite videos I’m making for them as online marketing piece. Of course its featured on their site and YouTube channel as well.

This is maybe the prettiest WordPress theme I’ve ever designed for a small business website. More importantly, I think it most accurately communicates the style & approach of this unique holistic health practice here in Pittsburgh’s East End.

Founded by certified Gyrotonic® instructor Anne Brownlee and housed in a lovely private home, Golden Thread Studio offers private, duet and group classes in Gyrotonic® movement, breathing and meditation guidance, and holistic health counseling services. Anne also partners with YogaHive and other mind-body oriented centers in southwest Pennsylvania to bring her knowledge and instruction to other commmunities.

My work for Anne consisted of adapting her existing graphic identity into a cohesive online brand. Using WordPress of course, we established the blogging, event scheduling/booking, boutique and social media functions that Anne wanted to implement into her business. I also developed a keyword writing guide for Anne and installed the corresponding optimized taxonomy to help her get the most out of WordPress’ SEO capabilities with the least amount of learning curve.

Its been hard to get good pictures of the progress on this faux painting project because of the recent run of cloudy days here in Pittsburgh, its snowing again as I write!

Regardless, I’m excited because this faux stone painted finish is coming out so well. In person, it is warm and bright in an old house entry and stairwell with mostly filtered light, even when its grey and gloomy outside. These pics are about two weeks old now, but show off some nice moments throughout the first and second floor painting in different kinds of light: sunny, cloudy and artifical. I’ll put up new ones after the next bright day.

I’ve spent as much time on different WordPress development jobs as I have painting on this faux stone project over the last week, but there’s no eye candy like this from web design, and its so soothing to NOT be working in front of a screen for a few hours a day. Here are some progress pix from last week taken with the Canon on a pair of reasonably sunny days out, all the natural light in the stairwell is heavily filtered. I’m happy to say that this finish is stubbornly bright and warm on cloudy grey days- this week I’ll find out how it looks at night under indoor lighting as I detail the main entry, more pix to come.

Its been a slamming busy holiday and New Year since I last blogged, with post-holiday letdowns wonderfully crushed to nothing between a group of exciting projects in process and the Pittsburgh Steelers hitting their stride in the playoffs.

I’m going to start with this project, partly because its sort of the most unlikely candidate, given how much website design and social media work I’ve been doing here in Pittsburgh, and partly because it makes use of one of the simple digital publishing strategies I frequently recommend to my small business web design clients.

After a few false starts last year, I am now actually engaged in my first real custom art project here in Pittsburgh, a painted faux finish in an old home in Pittsburgh’s Point Breeze neighborhood.

The proposed finish is on the left, the freshly primed surface to be painted is on the right. The surface was last painted 40-50 years ago, and appear to be a heavy plaster float that’s been incised with stone block pattern; the “grout” lines are fully dimensional.

A found piece of alabaster was the inspiration for the finish itself, you can see more images of samples with source and original finish on my Flickr page, which brings us to the publishing strategy.

I uploaded these first pics a few days ago actually for the purpose of sharing with clients currently in Florida, and getting their approval to go ahead with the work. (Small Business Hint!)

I find it easier and faster to upload pictures and have them well displayed on Flickr than anywhere else, and a basic account on Flickr is still free.

And its infinitely easier to make an online album of related pictures and email a link to someone than it is to process pics in to web format, attach pics to email in compressed format, get delivered thru random email programs and then get properly unzipped on the other end for viewing.

After communication-over-distance solution, the first bonus is that I’m actually on Flickr writing this right now, and after I finish talking, Flickr will post this for me to the page you’re reading right now. All I do is hit ‘Post’, Flickr does the work for me, formatting, everything, with every photo, anytime I need to quickly and easily get something up online, share with collaborators, clients or clients-to-be (Small Business Hint!)

There are several other bonuses to using Flickr that I teach to artists, small businesses, non-profits and other clients looking to streamline their digital publishing, social media and internet marketing workloads; I’ll try to illustrate here as this project continues into February.

One of my favorite projects this year here in Pittsburgh that I’m very grateful for this season as the year winds down is the WordPress site I built for The Picket Fence. Not only did I have the opportunity to work with a wonderfully well established brand-- clear mission, great graphic identity, fun stuff-- but I had the chance to solve a huge problem for them as well.

Despite having a well organized online store, The Picket Fence was having a terrible time in the search engines, and barely generating enough additional online sales to make their ecommerce project worthwhile to the business, despite their large investments of time and money.

So I got to dive into their identity and not only make a site that’s pretty to look at and faithful to The Picket Fence style, but build it in such a way that they are already seeing a large uptick in unique visitors to the site, items selected in the shopping cart, and over all online sales in less than a month: WordPress SEO to the rescue!!

I’m especially grateful to have made this happen for them because the family that built The Picket Fence have been friends and support to my wife’s family for three generations now and to my family since my first trip to Pittsburgh over ten years ago, and its been seasonally festive to go above and beyond in joy and gratitude on this particular project.

The Picket Fence is also hosting Heather’s first trunk show here in Pittsburgh on Friday in the store in Shadyside, featured on The Picket Fence site