EGD: Paradise Beauty Lounge Nail Salon

Last year, Lash Paradise Beauty Lounge began transitioning to a more concise name, Paradise Beauty Lounge, in anticipation of the grand opening for the lash salon side that opened in 2020 and the nail salon which opened in 2022. While the name isn’t finalized due to some further research and needing to be done to make it happen, the name is appearing in different places online and in print.

Recently, Torianna Paradise, the owner/operator of Lash Paradise/Paradise Beauty Lounge, approached me and asked me to revise the signage we did for them to reflect the expansion of the lash salon to include the nail salon.

Below are the install photos from what we did. The nail salon windows had the same treatment as the lash salon side, right next door, and the listing of the main services were included in the building and pylon signs.

If you’re looking to make an appointment to get your lashes, nails, or brows done, visit their website to book an appointment!

EGD: Lash Paradise Beauty Lounge

Although I don’t wildly spend money on things I can’t afford, I’d like to say I have expensive taste. I enjoy looking at clothes, buying prestige brands when I shop for makeup, and not settling for store brand things when I know I can get the national brand names. I’m not great at saving (though I try), and I dunno… I wanna be fancy, I guess.

My boyfriend’s soon-to-be daughter-in-law, Torianna, has her cosmetology license and has been working doing hair (blowouts, specifically) and lashes for years at this point. She started her own LLC doing lashes and cleverly named it after herself: Lash Paradise. (Torianna’s last name is Paradise—cool, right?) She started by working out of her home in a cute little room in the house she and her two children shared with her mother and stepfather. There were cute and bougie lash-themed decorations, a nice bed lined with that crinkly paper you find in the doctor’s office on a roll, a small rolly-stool for the tech to sit while she’s working, and a nice little organizer on the side with all of her tools and supplies.

Over the years, she’s built up her clientele, and as a fellow woman with expensive taste, she also had dreams of having a high-end salon.

During the pandemic, she came to my boyfriend and me and announced she found a space and was going to rent it for her own salon. She wanted me to design the logo and signage and my boyfriend would take care of getting the collateral fabricated and he would install.

I was trying to wait until the salon’s grand opening before posting this blog, but the grand opening was also supposed to be a couple of months ago. The salon is open and operating and books fast! Contact and location info will be at the bottom of this post.

Lash Paradise Beauty Lounge, located at 127 Greentree Rd Ste 3, Blackwood, NJ 08012, is not too far from the on-ramp to 42 N (North-South Freeway) with easy access to Deptford shopping areas, 295 N and S, and the Walt Whitman and Ben Franklin bridges to Philadelphia. It’s also close to the AC Expressway, linking Philadelphia to Atlantic City, and Rt 322 for a more scenic route to the southern shore points.

You can call the salon at (856) 535-8569 or visit their website at https://lashparadisebeautylounge.com/home to book an appointment.

Logo: LAR Services

When you’re a graphic designer, everyone you know will usually come to you for any “creative work” they need. Sometimes it’s dumb, other times it’s fun. This is one of those times where it was fun.

My boyfriend, Luis, during the initial quarantine period last year, experienced a lay off from his job. While home, he decided he wanted to invest in something that would eventually pay for itself: a tractor.

One day, he says to me, “guess what I just bought!” and shows me a picture of what I call a “big, orange bug”. He bought this beautiful, bright pumpkin orange kubota (the actual color is “Kubota Orange”—so innovative, so creative) tractor as well as some accessories for it. That entire week, he rode around in it, built a new shed for his pieces, cleared a section of his yard so we could start a garden, and started telling his friends and family to spread the word. It was decided using this tractor would be a side hustle for him, which was good for some sort of income while unemployed, even if patchy.

With this decision, he wanted to make it a little more professional. Together, we worked on a logo, and put that logo on business cards, signs, and magnets he put on his truck.

His vision was to incorporate both his new toy and the color. He also made it clear that he did not want the tractor to be orange, because he was afraid it wouldn’t stand out enough.

We went through a few (read: several) ideas at first. None of them really spoke to him or how he felt his new venture should be portrayed to a tee, but he did have some partial feelings to a couple. He also insisted the word “backhoe” be used so people had a specific idea of what services he actually offered and that he was not just a handyman.

Although I no longer have these printouts we pinned up to show, I still have the digital version. He circled a couple from this initial round and we took it from there. What we came up with was kind of simple, but was exactly what Luis was looking for.

We kept the tractor black like the “LAR”, but added an orange ring behind it. The orange signified the color of the tractor, the roundness of a circle reflected upon Luis’ well-rounded nature in both his personality and work (despite specifically using the word “backhoe” to identify what he did) and drew attention to the tractor. The words “Backhoe Services” are in a beautiful charcoal gray to avoid too much black logo, and to let the “LAR” (Luis’ initials) and the tractor stand out, thus becoming the key identifiers in the logo.

Copy styles and choices in black and white.

Copy styles and choices in black and white.

Color version of the logo: vertical, horizontal, icon, and logotype.

Luis’ first time using the tractor to try and dig up the surface of the yard before tilling for us to start our garden.

Once Luis signed off on the logo, we went to work making other things for him to get started with: business cards (home-printed to see how it goes), a sign for his garage, and a set of magnets for his truck.

With the signs and the business card, Luis wanted to take it a step further and add on key words that let people know what he can do with his tractor: auger, backhoe, brush hog, and loader—attachments he has for the tractor to get different things done. Over the winter with each snowfall, he was able to go plow for different local businesses, as people began to refer him via WOM (word of mouth).

As things begin to pick up for him, and he feels like he can really make a living with it, he will start to look into making it into an LLC, get real business cards printed, and maybe even find an office space. But for now, we’re just working simply and enjoying his new toy.

I had asked Luis to let me take photos of him holding his business cards for months at this point; by time he was able to let me do it, he already handed out all the good copies of his cards and only had the mistakes left, hence the banding on the one card.

The sign hangs above the garage doors that house the bug.

One of the magnets seated on the door of Luis’ truck.

One of the magnets seated on the door of Luis’ truck.

For anyone in the South Jersey area (for now) looking for work to be done by Luis and his orange tractor, feel free to call the number on the sign, or email the address shown on his card.

Throwback Thursday: EGD Workshop @ Penn Museum

Who remembers how University of Pennsylvania’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology didn’t have a cohesive signage/wayfinding system? Anyone? Just me?

It’s funny how things come full circle. When I was a junior at UArts, we were split into groups for a mandatory week-long workshop with an industry professional who volunteered to come in and show us what they do. I was in the group that worked under Virginia Gehshan of Cloud Gehshan, an EGD design firm seated right in Old City, Philadelphia.

At the time of this workshop (2010?), conception and possibly even design finalization was going on at Cloud Gehshan for new wayfinding going up at UPenn’s famed museum. Since that was the hot topic at the firm, Virginia thought that’s what we could do, also. So, she scheduled for us to take a field trip to the museum (sort of, we had to all pile in cabs or ride the subway to get to our destination—all of which we had to figure out on our own) and reconvened in the courtyard before splitting up once more. Our group opted (by majority consensus…or maybe Virginia voted for it) for cab ($8 one way per person, about 21 blocks), although I very much voted for subway (roughly $2 for one way, I think, at the time). I thought the subway would be quicker (and cheaper), we’d just have to buy tokens.

I remember my group: Marty, Leandra, John (who literally showed up once) and I think Sophie. Marty was our group leader and instructed us to take as many photos as possible. We went around and took photographs of signage (shown above, pin letters on the brick wall of the museum’s perimeter) of all types whether or not it belonged to the museum (yup, SEPTA bus route signs, too), decorations, wall patterns, murals, vinyls, floor tiles, etc. You name it, we photographed it. The idea was to get as many different ideas of any motifs or schemes we could find. The problem was, there was no correlation between the exterior and interior wayfinding and signage.

When we were done, we headed back to our studio in Terra, the building we called home as GD students, and had a group discussion about what we saw at the museum as well as what our task would be for the rest of the week. We worked for a few hours before Virginia called time and we disbanded for the day.

The next day, we congregated into the studio, segregated in our assigned groups, and worked quietly. John, the member of our group who didn’t attend the first day of the workshop, showed up so I began going over with him what we were doing to get him up to speed.

Virginia thought I was being disruptive, so she looked over and told me to stop talking, that it’s not a social hour. I looked at her, slightly embarrassed as everyone stared at me, and said, “Virginia, this is John.” She goes, “Who is John? I don’t know who he is.” She’s clearly still annoyed. I responded with, “He’s in our group and was absent yesterday. I’m catching him up.” She felt bad, I could tell, and said, “Oh, okay.” She later apologized for calling me out when I wasn’t really doing anything wrong. I told her it was fine, and we moved on.

Despite that hiccup in our work time, our group spent the day sketching and discussing colors (sheet shown below provided by Virginia!), common shapes, potential schemes and how we were going to use everything.

After that day, John never came back. We knew this would happen, so when we divvied up the work, we gave him something non-critical, despite his promise to show up daily. We pushed through without him over the next three days, and our visions came to life.

By the end of the week, we had a full package ready to present. As instructed, we pinned up our process book showcasing our thought process throughout this workshop alongside the other groups.

It was interesting to see what everyone did, especially when color palettes and other ideas were similar but used and executed very differently.

Each group got to present their signage and wayfinding package, and at the end, we all clapped and celebrated with pizza. It was the last time I saw Virginia, but not the last time I worked with Cloud Gehshan.

Three years later, I was hired by Urban Sign and worked there for five years. One of the first projects I got to see go out the door was none other than the signage designed by Cloud Gehshan for the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

So really, my experience with EGD begins when I was still in college. I never thought that’s where I’d end up, but alas, I spent the last six years immersed in signage, murals, wayfinding, ADA, interactive displays, etc. It’s an incredible field, and I’ve learned so much being in it.

Below are some of the things we finalized as part of our wayfinding package for the museum:

Top Hops Essex Crossing

Concept rendering I did in Photoshop.

Concept rendering I did in Photoshop.

I like beer. Not like, to the level of Supreme Justice Brett Kavanaugh, but enough to be excited about a job that involves beer. No, I didn’t get to drink any, but I got to look at it and think like it.

What does that even mean?

Well, it means think like your client. Not in the sense of not knowing how to arrange type and making things pop to the point it looks like you made it in MS Paint, but rather about the business. What about them? What do they do? Why do people love them? What do they look like? What do they want to look like? Ask questions because with questions come answers and with answers come ideas.

Creativity wasn’t at full blast here as some of the implementations were taken from their other locations—to sort of, y’know, tie it all together. Color palettes, sign styles, etc.

via @Top_Hops on Instagram

via @Top_Hops on Instagram

What makes things fun, though, is being able to pull other people into the mix. In this project, we needed (2) hanging bottle signs, (2) chalkboards, one counter stencil and a whole lot of Photoshop work. The bottle signs and counter stencil was easy—send it to the shop. But what do we do with the chalkboards? We could ask the shop to make them, OR…

We can employ a woodworker who makes out-of-this-world things like furniture and décor from scrap wood he sources from various places. I had brought Jeff Miller, a former classmate of mine from our undergrad days and a fellow South Jerseyan, on board for a project we did for Adidas in their new office space in NYC—he built four styles of frames for us for that job, about twenty or so in total (it may have been more), and they were phenomenal. I knew he’d blow this one out of the park, too. I convinced my boss to let him do it and yup!

He did it again.

All-in-all, this job was a success and the clients were really happy with the outcome.

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Client: Top Hops Brewing Company (via drive21)

Project: Top Hops Essex Crossing Market

Fabricators: XDFOUR; Jeff Miller