Shots of last Friday’s Street Fest from the TOKY window throughout the evening. The street was packed for several hours throughout the event, all the way from Garrison to Compton. Likely 2-3 times more people than the previous year, despite the threat of thunderstorms. Thanks to all who came out, and look forward to next years Street Fest!
Bruce Burton has joined TOKY as Senior Designer on the print team, coming to us from the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis.
It’s time once again for Midtown Alley Street Fest. Last years event was a hit, and this one looks to be bigger and better. In just the few short years since we’ve been working in this neighborhood, we’ve seen major improvements like great new restaurants, new businesses and tons of historic old buildings brought back to life. Come by next Friday for free music from 6 bands, food from some of the great spots and tons of other activities. Locust Street from Garrison to Compton will be closed off for pedestrians, and bands will play right on the street. Should be a good night!
Midtown Alley Street Fest 2010
Friday August 20th, 2010
4-11pm on Locust Street from Compton to Garrison
More information and RSVP at the Facebook page
Last week we celebrated the 10 year work anniversary of Jay David, our web team ACD, with a surprise party, too much food, some great gifts and a fantastic video surprise: a 2 minute video from the legendary (or infamous) Fred and Sharon’s Movies! Not only was Jay surprised but also embarrassed beyond belief. Mission accomplished!
Our friend and client Dave Bailey, the brains behind St. Louis’s “Chocolate Bar”, “Bridge” and “Rooster“, alerted us to this Mexican doppleganger.
Apparently some enterprising restauranteurs wanted to open a breakfast place in Isla Mujeres this year, but didn’t want to go through the hassle of actually having to work with a design company. Instead, they nicked Rooster’s name, logo, and signage. Pollo loco.
As part of FEAST magazine’s cross-media branding, TOKY designed the look and feel of the website — including the various templates for all pages.
When we design for the web, we try to work as closely as possible with developers throughout the development cycle in an effort to maintain the integrity of the original design. We are a “pixel-perfect” shop, and we live for typographic perfection from design through development.
Often, when we are asked to hand over our Photoshop files, we don’t get an opportunity to interact with the developers as a site is being built or review the site before it goes live. That was the situation with FEAST, and rarely produces a truly great site. Developers are hard-pressed to stitch so many pieces of a site together before launch that they often overlook the “details” that they deem inconsequential.
The FEAST site almost gets it right, except for a few of those overlooked details here and there. These details are, of course, what distinguish great from good. Here are a few examples of some discrepancies we noticed. TOKY’s comps are on the left or on top; the live site on the right or bottom.
1. The developers decided to implement an HTML font for the navigation instead of the more branded, bolder typeface we had selected.
2. Additionally, the navigation drop menus use a different font and the line-spacing is much tighter in the final version, and the dividing rules are black and not reversed, giving the menus a cramped feeling.
3. We designed the “Most Commented” and “Most Read” tabs to work with the color palette of the site; these were changed in development as well as the left alignment of the copy, creating a jagged scanning and reading experience for the visitor. Additionally, the “Read More/Get The Recipe” button is misaligned, and the letterspacing in the design was overlooked.
For the most part, the site functions as it should. We hope that as the site evolves the development team will go back and revisit the original comps in an effort to polish up the elements that have been overlooked. Until then, it’s more famine than FEAST. See for yourself: www.feaststl.com
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