How to channel Redstone current vertically?

I'm making a door with piston sliding sideways that reacts to pressure plates.
As the pressure plates are sending the current to redstone at a very low level, I need to raise it somehow, and this leads to awkward stairs of redstone.

So I'm wondering whether there are better ways of sending the redstone current up, maybe even vertically.

You can place redstone dust on glowstone and upside-down slabs. This is important because they are also transparent blocks, so the redstone current won't be blocked. You can set up your glowstone or top slabs in an alternating pattern, with redstone on top, and then run the current from there.

And here is a video by CaptainSparklez that demonstrates this:

Going straight up is one of the easier directions to manage via redstone.

Just alternate torches and solid blocks, and you can send the signal up as far as you need.