(Reading time: 3 – 4 minutes)
I love art. At least, I love the art I like. And I like quite a bit of it.
I like art enough to buy it. But only original art, and I have some fairly serious standards. I only buy original art that I like, directly from artists taking it seriously as a career.
The 101 series, woodblock no. 1 (BP)
Sadly, Deacon’s wood block prints are far cooler than my blog posts.
Once you see what’s he’s done, I’m sure you’ll agree.
In any case, because he and go way back (he’s one of my two readers, after all), he’s extending an opportunity to readers of Website In A Weekend to obtain a woodblock 101 for the cost of shipping and handling.
I have no idea what these ought to cost. A lot more than shipping. I know he put at least as much work into each one of these as Gail Perrazinni puts into her monotypes. I bought a Perrazzini for $80 a few years ago. The Perrazinni is a lot smaller than Deacon’s work, too.
I do know one thing: he’s crazy to practically give them away!
But that’s Bad Deacon. He’s gonna do what he wants.
In any case, if you would like a very fine piece of original art for the cost of shipping and handling, you should hump it over to Bad Deacon Design and sign up for his newsletter. He’ll take it from there.
And yes, Deacon is using WordPress for his entire sales platform.
Here’s how…
WordPress from scratch
The entire Bad Deacon Design website is a hand-coded, custom-themed WordPress site.
The front page is static, with another static page handling blog posts. Bad Deacon Design is not just a blog, but it has a blog in it. Most of the “heavy lifting” on the site is with pages.
WordPress shapes how the marketing is organized. Each step in the sales process has a page assigned to it.
Most of the elements, such as the newsletter signup box and the purchase box, are separate PHP files that can be arbitrarily dropped into the template for any page.
The Bad Deacon Design theme is custom-built, from scratch. The CSS stylesheet literally started from:
* { margin: 0; padding: 0; }
The design of each page is meant to promote a certain action, and only that action. There are no alternatives in the form of a sidebar, navigation menu, etc. The design is meant to focus the activity of the user.
All of these changes to the theme were very easy to accomplish with a little working knowledge of template files, HTML, CSS, and a tiny bit of PHP.
And there you have it.
If using WordPress this way appeals to you, and you’d like to hang out your shingle, leave a note below.
And don’t forget to reserve one of these unique prints.
Would you like more? Send me a letter...
{ 6 comments }
I can’t stress enough how helpful doing all of this in Wordpress has been. It is so easy to change, modify, and get what I need done. This probably would have taken 2,3, maybe even 10 times longer with any platform other than Wordpress.
Thanks for the support, Dave. Your friendship and help has been encouraging, and so appreciated.
Deacon´s last blog ..Be An Artist: Get a Sketch Book Today
Free is a good price!
Anyway, just curious, how much would shipping a woodblock cost across the country to PA?
Gabe | freebloghelp.com´s last blog ..The 21st century corporate soapbox
The total cost to help with materials is $3.55 each, plus a flat $5 for shipping anywhere in the U.S. Check ‘em out!
Deacon´s last blog ..Be An Artist: Get a Sketch Book Today
@Gabe – I have mine!
@Deacon – It’s been a blast. I have a hunch that the SF Bay Area is going to end a leader in small business marketing and technology, we’re in a really good place to learn a lot. The amount of talent here is enormous.
Dr Wordpress!´s last blog ..Stop It! Three Things to Stop Doing In Your PPC Campaign
Dr Wordpress… Do you ever sleep? These posts remind me of ones that I usually stay up most of the night writing. Another nice informational article.
Rob´s last blog ..Pet Medical Supplies That Are Reliable & Affordable
@Rob – I can crank these kinds of articles pretty quick, usually 30-45 minutes first draft, then I’ll refine over a couple of days.
It’s the technical articles that are tough. I have to actually check facts, make sure code runs; time consuming and tedious.
Dr Wordpress!´s last blog ..Stop It! Three Things to Stop Doing In Your PPC Campaign
Comments on this entry are closed.
{ 1 trackback }