A Teenage Chicago Penthouse, in my Basement!

Who doesn’t love a before and after comparison, I do them for web sites quite a lot, ( here here and here)  to showcase how a few design tweaks can make a huge impact on the appeal of a site. But today I am going to show you how I used my graphic design skills and tools to transform a very dingy, quite disgusting Chicago basement room into a light and airy teenage “penthouse” hang out.

basement penthouse

My canvas for this room was horrible wood paneling which has the texture of drift wood but nowhere near as pleasant. I primed then painted everything white, it took 3 coats before it looked good.

Then came the fun bit.

To be certain the skyline idea was going to work in terms of scale and look/ feel, and what colors looked best, I did a little Illustrator and Photoshop mockup.

First I designed the skyline in Illustrator. It was then imported  into Photoshop and superimposed  a photograph of the wall I intended to paint. ( I used the multipy function and distorted the illustrator graphic to fit the wall dimensions) After a bit of color tweaking, playing around with different shade of gray we settled on a simple black and  gray color palette.

painted skyline

Because of the rough nature of the paneling my initial plan to carefully tape off and paint the skyline failed so I ended up painting the whole thing free hand. If you look carefully I did not stick religiously to the illustrator design but it was enough to point me in the right direction. It turned out pretty well.

I have a bit more work to do on the furniture on the other side of the room… more painting which I will share soon!

© 2011 Chicago Web Designer

A Selection of our St Louis Blog Clients

Blogs have become a great way to interact with your site visitors, providing them with fresh news, stories and events. A blog can be easily added to an existing web site and requires no technical knowledge to use.

Very often the blog will be the first page visited on your web site and your first opportunity to present your visitor with your brand image. If you use one the standard templates offered with say Google Blogger, your blog might have all the functionality you wish but the opportunity to engage your visitor with your brand lost . As the saying goes you only have one chance to make a first impression.

We specialize in creating a blog which compliments your brand image.

Here are two example of our blog work in action:-

Citizens for Modern Transit Working to expand St Louis Metrolink ..topical issues

Cynthia Reeg News from children’s author Cynthia Reeg

Also in development are blogs for two other St Louis based companies, Throttlenet and Loomis Bros.