The Swiss Avenue Project—Mother's Day Tour
The most recent event was the Swiss Avenue Mother’s Day Tour of Homes & Art Fair. We spent the day Saturday with Mom (and had a lovely time, thank you) so we could photograph the event on Sunday. And what a day! We were up and down Swiss, sticking our camera where decent people ought not and captured the flavor of the neighborhood and the annual event to share with you.
Trudge on over to SwissAvenueProject.com and check out the site. The slideshow of the Mother’s Day Tour is here. As always, we appreciate your comments and suggestions.
Heading Into the Stretch
We're a Fan of Fan Benno-Caris
Sometimes the line gets crossed… by that I mean that sometimes I cross the line… from client to friend. And then to supporter.
Our latest client is 91-year-old Fan
Benno-Caris. You may have seen her on CNN or major local TV and
radio news programs, as well as the Dallas Morning News and its
website. Fan is running "the biggest race of my life," she says.
That race is for a place on the Addison City Council.
PentaGRAFX has created the website and all the campaign collateral
material for the Addison For Fan campaign.
But Fan isn't new to competition. She's a world-record-holding,
world champion racewalker. More importantly, Fan is a person who
knows what she wants in life and goes after it. She has a vision
for herself, sets goals, and sets her shoulder to the wheel and
does the work to achieve those goals.
Fan Benno-Caris is my hero. And although I cannot vote for her
because I live in Dallas (we should talk to Addison Mayor Joe Chow
about that) I heartily support her in her Addison For Fan
campaign for a place on the city council.
While small and petite, Fan's stature and sweet demeanor might lead
one to be dismissive. But one does so at one's peril. She has some
strong views on a variety of issues facing Addison — and all
cities — as the global financial crisis becomes more and more
localized. And she will be heard.
Keep an eye on Fan Benno-Caris. She's the leading edge of a
movement in this country, a movement by folks with
experience in a wide variety of areas who are not content simply to
rock away their sunset years on the front porch while sipping on a
lemonade. They've seen the mistakes of the past and want to step
forward to help us avoid repeating those blunders. Or, at least, to
help us prepare to weather the storm.
If you live in Addison, Texas, I enthusiastically encourage you to
seek out Fan Benno-Caris, learn more about the issues, and vote for
her on May 9th.
New Website for HiddenGoddess.com
Our client, Candice White, a brilliant portrait photographer, is expanding her business to include boudoir photography. After receiving over 100,000 hits on her portraiture website, we discovered that her boudoir pages were receiving more hits than any other category. Since her main business is family and child portraiture, we thought this was information worth acting on.
Turns out that even after factoring out undesirable traffic, the
number of hits on her boudoir photography page was substantial. We
began by discussing a theme for the site. Ms. White has a strong
love of theatricality in her photography, so we decided to use a
theater-look as a springboard for designing the site.
What does a theater have? Curtains. Great big, sensual, velvety
curtains. What didn’t we have at our disposal? You got it.
But the next best thing was using lots of imagination and a bit of
Photoshop to create our own curtains.
Fortunately, Candice happened to have a red dress made of a very
“red curtainy” material. We steamed it a bit to remove
some wrinkles and hung it on a garment rack as you can see below.
We locked down the camera and shot several frames in succession,
each time moving the dress down a bit and rotating it so that the
folds fell differently for each shot. This gave us a
natural-looking lighting setup — slightly hot on one side and
falling off to the right.
It took some manipulation in Photoshop
to get the “curtain” to be reasonably even at the
bottom from stage right to stage left. Once completed, we copied
the curtain’s several layers into a new single layer and made
a layer mask out of its shape, then unlinked the mask. We used
Motion Blur to get rid of all the wrinkles, once and for all, and
blended the new, blurred curtain with the curtain layers below
using Overlay. This gave a sheen and a snap to the curtain that the
original lacked.
Touching up a few minor flaws, we then had our curtain. We added a
valance and a stage and we were in “show
bidness!”
Another Day, Another Website
PentaGRAFX just launched a new website for the Fort Worth Art Show supporting their inaugural show on Sept. 20th in Fort Worth. It includes bios of the founders, a blog of their activities and thoughts on creativity, and gallieries of a small portion of their work.
Also planned are an e-store to buy art online and resources for custom framing.
Our Newest Website
We just finished a new website for our client, Southland Safety. They’re an industrial safety company with clients in Oil & Gas, Manufacturing, Chemical Manufacturing, Construction, & DOT Operator Qualification.
The site was three times larger than
originally planned and we accomplished everything we set out to do
at the start; improvising, adapting, and overcoming all the
obstacles we met along the way.
We're Back!
Finally, we're back. Fighting cancer became a full-time job this past summer. Thank God and the good doctors at Parkland for removing the cancer from my neck and throat, and my physical therapist for beating me up twice a week to make me stronger.
It's taken quite a lot of work to get back to fighting weight and strength. And my stamina is back, mostly. My pain is under control, for the most part, and I'm ready to produce my best work. Over the course of the next year or so what I call work may change but that's a story for another day.
Today, the good news is that PentaGRAFX is back to work and is looking to expand its client base.
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We're proud to announce that we're
designing a new website for our news client, Southland Safety, LLC.
Southland is a safety consulting firm with clients in oil and gas,
manufacturing, pipeline, commercial, and construction fields.
They've engaged PentaGRAFX to upgrade their website to put them on
an equal footing with their competitors' websites and help them
promote their most profitable services.
As soon as the site goes live, we'll post a thumbnail and
link.
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This is a very brief entry just to let
you know that we've opened the doors for business again, after
months of concentrating on the best way to deal with throat and
neck cancer. We'll have more to come very soon.
In the meantime, thank you for your support, your phone calls and
emails, and for hanging in there with me. I have a lot to be
grateful for and plan on making some changes, not only in my
personal life, but in the way I make a living. PentaGRAFX will soon
undergo some changes for the better.
I'd like to hear from you. Please contact me at
lsstevens@pentagrafx.com or call me at 214.650.7924 and let's catch
up.
Lawrence Standifer Stevens
PentaGRAFX—Now Fighting Cancer
Some visitors here know that I was recently diagnosed with cancer and, so, this news should not come as a surprise.
Our full-time focus has become fighting cancer. Or, rather, doing battle with the bureaucracies at various hospitals.
We see light at the end of the tunnel. . . and have only entered the tunnel. It's dark in here, for certain, but the way out is through, toward the light.
That's where we're headed.
Why the plural "we" and "our?" Because so many friends have taken up our cause that "I, me, and my" just doesn't seem to cover the scope of who is fighting this battle.
You can keep up with our progress at LawrenceStevens.com.
Join us on our journey.
WindoDressing.com Goes Live
Our newest client, WindoDressing™, a home improvement company in East Texas specializing in window treatments and kitchen and bath design, just turned on the switch for their new website. Business is very good and they have high hopes to create a touchpoint for customers both to see their products and to be able to contact the company for their products and services.
Future plans include a blog and a Before/After photo album to show off their work.
If you live in East Texas, visit their
site and look over their line of products. They're good people and
do excellent work.
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Lots of projects going on here at PentaGRAFX. Stay tuned for more
news.
Playing Catchup on the News
Things have been hopping around PentaGRAFX for the past few months, leaving things like updates to our Latest News blog to pile up on the corner of our desk. This is a problem that is more welcome than not.
3-in-1 Product Brochure
With that said, one of the recent print projects we've done was a bit of a challenge — the new piece, a 12-page brochure + cover for DiamondTouch, Inc. It incorporated a pocket inside the back cover to contain letterhead, a CD, and a business card. The challenge was bringing together 3 previous pieces: a presentation folder, 10 (+ 2 new) sell sheets, and a 4-page brochure into a single brochure. We also were asked to mimic the color scheme of the company's trade show booth while keeping the overall look of the piece consistent with previous collateral, which had a clean, open look.It was a fun project and the piece benefited from the terrific product photography of Marty Perlman here in Dallas.
Bottom line — the client, Tom Bronson, president of DiamondTouch loved it! He even printed more than he has in the past and his very excited resellers couldn't wait to get their hands on them.
Website Design
At PentaGRAFX, we're constantly reaching, growing and stretching to acquire skills, hire people, and create relationships that help us to serve our present and future clients. For almost 20 years, we've been primarily a print-oriented design firm. And, although print isn't going away anytime soon, the market has changed and the rate of change is accelerating. That's why we're now offering web design and search engine optimization for our clients.Our newest web client is Candice White, a brilliant fine art and portrait photographer based here in Dallas. She knows precisely what she wants and demands nothing less than our best effort.
We stepped up to the task and produced a website that we're very proud of for its beauty, simplicity, and ease-of-use. With over 200 images in her online portfolio, it became clear that staying organized would be a chore. But once in the groove, things went very smoothly.
Simple, elegant, and scaleable. . . that's why the client said, "IT
IS BEAUTIFUL! I'm very pleased."
Along the way, we redesigned her company logo and incorporated it
into the site. Two versions are shown here.
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That's it for now. More to come soon. Keep those cards and letters
coming. . . er, make that, IMs and emails.
Podcast Seminar - Make Podcasting Pay
Podcasting is ushering in a "revolution in communications." It lowers the barrier to entry so that anyone can give voice to their expertise, their opinions, their passions — and, often, while making money in the process. That's why PentaGRAFX is pleased to announce that we are presenting a free, morning-long seminar on this new medium on October 12th at the Bill Priest Institute in Dallas..
The seminar, held in conjunction with the Small Business Development Center (SBDC), is geared toward small business owners, speakers and authors — anyone who wants to raise awareness of themselves and grow their businesses.
For more information, see the press release or download the flyer for the seminar. Please feel free to share both with others.
Off The Dime 'Cast Celebrates Episode #10
Off The Dime, a podcast of political and social commentary has reached a mark that some say it would never achieve -- its 10th episode!
Available from iTunes or any other podcast "aggregator" (who came up with that term?), OTD is a running commentary on politics, society, religion, George W. Bush, political correctness, and just about anything else Lawrence Standifer Stevens can think of.
Check it out. It may or may not be what YOU would say. . . but it's sure to get your blood pumping, whether you agree or not.
PentaGRAFX Seeks Good People
PentaGRAFX is looking for a few good freelancers and one tremendously productive salesperson. These are all 1099 positions are are opportunities to grow with us as we grow. Visit our Opportunities page for more information on the available positions. Contact us with a cover letter and resumé, and a link to your online portfolio (where appropriate).
New Campaign for DiamondTouch
PentaGRAFX just completed the opening salvoes in a new marketing and ad campaign for DiamondTouch. DiamondTouch is a software company that provides POS systems to a very narrow niche market — pizza delivery restaurants.
This is a new direction for DiamondTouch and aims to help with differentiation from their competitors; rather than talking about product features, in the new campaign, we emphasized the main reasons DiamondTouch's customers buy their product and remain so loyal — 1. The people at DiamondTouch; 2. Ease of use; and 3. Direct benefits to the bottom line.
We just finished a final piece of
collateral for DiamondTouch as they head off to Las Vegas to a
pizza trade show. Armed with a new booth design, new ad, and new
collateral, they're sure to come home with tons of leads that will
help them solidify their lead in the pizza POS space.
Podcast Seminar Plants Seeds for Success
PentaGRAFX's Podcasting seminar held at the Bill Priest Institute for Economic Development on Valentine's Day was a great success. The people who attended left with a sense of the possibilities for using podcasting as a marketing tool and in a team exercise at the end of the session brainstormed their own ideas for podcasts and pitched them for approval.
The information from the session is available here on the PentaGRAFX website to anyone interested in podcasting.
Lawrence Stevens is available to speak to groups about this revolutionary new medium that has been called ". . . set to become the most powerful marketing tool of the future."
Podcast Seminar for Small Business Owners
Podcasting is becoming a more important part of our business with each passing week. That's why PentaGRAFX is pleased to announce that we are presenting a free, morning-long seminar on this new medium on Feb. 14th at the Bill Priest Institute.
The seminar, held in conjunction with the Small Business Development Center (SBDC), is geared toward small business owners, speakers and authors — anyone who wants to raise awareness of themselves and grow their businesses.
For more information, see the press release or download the flyer for the seminar. Please feel free to share both with others.