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.

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:

Butterfly Bridal Package

One of my best friends got married in 2018 and because she was on a super tight budget, I did what I could to help her DIY everything.

As her maid of honor, my job was to be her right hand man (woman?) in everything she wanted—dresses, expos, decorations, invites, etc. So, I did just that—we started with save the dates (pictured), then I worked on the bridal shower invites with the other bridesmaids, then came table decorations for the guest tables and signs for the prop tables.

The easiest part about all of this was the access I had to the equipment that would make my life easier: a laser cutter, wide format printers, jump shears, paper guillotines, vinyl for stickers, etc. I could use all of these for free and whenever I wanted!

Unfortunately, I didn’t get photos of everything, but the package was color themed: black, white, purple, pink and silver. We used butterflies (her favorite), flourishes, script fonts (whomever designed Autumn in November—thank you), and other delicate elements.

The full package included: save-the-dates, invitation set (main invite, RSVP, directions), envelopes (purchased!), script table numbers cut from 1/4” scrap acrylic on the laser cutter and painted with silver glitter spray paint, informative signs for guest photos on social media made with scrap Dibond, black vinyl and silver glitter spray paint, the bridal shower invites (shh, those were a surprise!), and Cricut-cut seating cards.

The wedding was a success and with all of the tangible elements being hand-made, it all had a personal touch. It was super fun making everything and I would 100% do it again if I still had access to the right equipment.

Wine Bar

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While working at the sign shop, I met a woman who was an important part of the company, although she was not an employee, manager or co-owner. Rather, she was a family friend who helped with the finance stuff and would occasionally bring the shop some work.

One of the projects she brought along was for us to build a custom over-the-door sign for the wine bar in a restaurant owned by a friend of hers.

She spoke with my boss, then came to me with her idea, giving me full rights to creativity. This is what I came up with, approval soon following.

The idea was to take the top portion of a barrel (imagine taking a large wine barrel and cutting just below the top band) and turning it into a custom sign with 3-D elements such as laser- and router-cut and painted acrylic letters and shapes affixed to the surface with studs and adhesive.

Unfortunately, the plan fell through, so we were never able to bring this sign to life. It sits memorialized in its 2-D state in my portfolio.

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This was designed while I was employed at Urban Sign & Crane, Inc.