In honor of National Melanoma Cancer Awareness Month, I interviewed a dozen folks who have been diagnosed with skin cancer. I digitally recorded their stories, and our photographers took lifestyle photographs. Their stories and images tell their story in the following slideshow.

Surprisingly, I noticed something different in these cancer survivors than other people I had interviewed with other types of cancer, such as breast cancer. The survivors’ attitude upon diagnosis was almost systematically laissez faire at first.

While the diagnosis of any type of cancer is so difficult that generations of people still whisper the word or refer to it generically as “C,” most people I interviewed were more intrepid about treatment. Their thoughts weren’t on radiation or chemo. Read more …

The design of a medical spa should be viewed as an important aspect of the market position and brand message of the business.

The starting point to a great medical spa design is to have a clear understanding of your mission, concept and program. This should then dictate all of the design elements within the spa. Remember that the interior design communicates your brand message on a very personal level, a level where clients are intimately interacting with your brand using their five senses.

In addition, the moment you attach the word spa to medical, as in “medspa” or “medical spa,” you build client expectations that need to be met through many facets of the brand, especially the design. Communicating a brand is about taking the intangible and presenting it in a tangible form that can be perceived easily by your clients. And what better form than the interior design elements of color, texture and shapes? Read more …