59 entries
Author of Entries By Eric Thoelke
President + Creative Director
eric@toky.com
September 2010
The editors at St. Louis Magazine had a very cool idea for their September issue cover story. In their words, “We contacted about 50 especially informed, creative, and influential St. Louisans and asked: If we gave you a check for $10 million, what’s the single project you would create to transform or improve St. Louis?”
Beaming from the flattery of being one of the 50 people asked, we brainstormed many ways to spend the hypothetical $10 million. Thinking big wasn’t the problem. Dam the Mississippi at Kimmswick to create a massive recreational lake below St. Louis? Even $10 million wouldn’t get that done. How about paying off ABInBev to get control of the brewery back in St. Louis? Or paying all of our City public school teachers what their counterparts in the County make? All too expensive.
Eventually we came around to an idea we’ve been working on for a while with Grand Center, St. Louis’ arts and culture district, and the neighborhood just west of our home in Midtown Alley. We proposed enlivening this theatre and museum district at night with artists’ sculptural works that deal with light and lighting. Think of it as a 10-block long sculpture park that springs to light at dusk.
We see at least 12 opportunities for light sculpture in the district, from Strauss Park to the Scottish Rite parking garage. The magazine has made us one of two respondents profiled on their website. Check it out, read the article, and tell us what you think!
August 2010
Bruce Burton has joined TOKY as Senior Designer on the print team, coming to us from the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis.
Bruce brings TOKY 6+ years of experience branding a leading museum, including individual shows, galas, membership campaigns, and numerous exhibition catalogs. He is on the Board of the AIGA St. Louis Chapter, where he serves as the Design Show Chair. Bruce has won several awards for his design from the AIGA. He’s also curated two shows on graphic design while at the Contemporary; one on the work of Ed Fella and currently a group show of five designers with non-coastal roots, titled
RBMBKESHKM.
In
this review of the show from the St. Louis Beacon, the reviewer says Bruce is “an excellent designer and practicing studio artist who also clearly possesses a sharp curatorial talent.”
Welcome, Bruce!
August 2010
http://www.vimeo.com/13942147
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!
August 2010
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.
July 2010
Sometimes the work we do takes a long time to gestate. Way back in 2006 TOKY worked with St. Louis’ Regional Housing and Community Development Alliance to help rebrand an area of Old North St. Louis that was ready to come back to life. We advised the RHCDA to use as the cornerstone of the brand the one asset they had in the area with high public recognition… Crown Candy Kitchen. In St. Louis, everybody knows Crown Candy. Heck, even that “Man Vs. Food” guy knows Crown Candy (and its bathrooms).
We used Crown Candy’s high consumer recognition to build the entire neighborhood brand, and Crown Village was born. This was an area where urban pioneers could buy homes for ridiculously low prices, literally minutes from downtown. Our positioning theme hammered that point home, taking a subtle swipe at the hyper-inflated prices of Washington Avenue’s tony lofts: “Great City Living, Without the Lofty Price.” The logo was made up of letterforms from the old commercial signs in the old 14th Street Mall.
Yesterday at a ceremony attended by lots of the City’s muckety-mucks, Crown Village debuted “Crown Square” which is (according the RHCDA site) “the most significant redevelopment to take place in the Old North Saint Louis historic neighborhood in many decades. This ambitious undertaking includes the historic rehabilitation of 27 buildings into 80 mixed-income apartments, townhouses, lofts and live-work spaces and 34,000 square feet of street level commercial space, with an array of ‘green building’ features built into the development. It includes the removal of the two-block long ‘pedestrian mall,’ tying the neighborhood back together with new streets, sidewalks, lighting, parking and other public amenities.”
Congrats to RHCDA and Old North. It’s been a long time coming!
July 2010
All this week we’re taking a look at the art direction and design TOKY did for St. Louis’ new FEAST Magazine. Our “Tablescapes” concept was a fantastical cityscape made of crockery, populated with miniature people to make it appear larger than life — and tongue in cheek.
After Feast staff shopped for 60+ products from six stores (OK, seven including the mini people), we got the shot list down to 41 unique shots. Photographer Ashley Gieseking then shot over 500 images to get the final 30 raw files needed. All of the photography was done in TOKY’s in-house photo studio, all in one loooong day. After the initial retouching and image clipping, we spent the next two days stitching it together in a massive retouching marathon, and we had three shots for the spreads above. Whew! Thank goodness it didn’t get changed after we turned it over to the editors.
Special shout outs to Ashley for her dedication and patience!
July 2010
This week we’re celebrating the launch of FEAST Magazine, the new publication from the suddenly very profitable Lee Enterprises. For the last three and a half months, the TOKY team has been eating and drinking FEAST layouts, all in secret as the mag prepared its launch.
Above are a couple of spreads from the 8-page White Barn feature story we designed around Tuan Lee’s wonderful photo essay (we also did the logo, grid system, all look and feel, many of the section story designs and the website design and CSS… but more on that later…). The White Barn is a cult destination for foodies and junk food aficionados in St. Louis. It’s the heart and soul of a 75 year old fireball named Rich Robson, who says “I love the people, and I love to work — and I like to flirt with the ladies.”
Our spreads have been pretty much unchanged from our final turn-over files to printed pieces. The only real changes we noted are that all the captions have mysteriously vanished, leaving empty little undesigned white pockets of space. Ah, well… I’m certain Roger Black has disappointments, too.
By the way, at FEAST’s debut party we spotted Mr. Robson standing quietly in a corner, and Katy and Liz from our team asked him for a photo. He’s kind of a hero around TOKY. He still loves the ladies. Looks like the ladies love him back.
July 2010
Opera Theatre of Saint Louis was profiled in this week’s St. Louis Business Journal in “Opera Theatre rewarded for bet on ‘Golden Ticket’ “. The line we were most proud of: “Opera Theatre’s 2010 box-office revenue hit a record, topping $1.8 million. Attendance for 2010 was up 5.5 percent from 2008, with 22 percent of the audience being new to Opera Theatre.”
Opera Theatre is one of our favorite clients, having worked with them on advertising, branding and design for seven years. If you saw “Golden Ticket” you know how great it was (and the super typographic sets were a graphic designer’s dream), so it’s nice to see the bet paid off for them.
Bravo, Opera Theatre!
July 2010
We attended the debut launch party of Catherine Neville’s new FEAST Magazine last night, and finally got our hands on a copy of the real thing.
After 100 days of immersing ourselves in the design of everything FEAST — from the new logo to the grid structure to the look and feel of the publication to the CMS-driven web site design — as well as final design of the magazine’s two main feature stories — it was nice to see the first issue printed and looking, well… pretty OK.
There were a lot of changes that we noticed in the magazine from our original files, but that’s to be expected as magazine designers turn over templates to internal art directors (kudos to Lisa Triefenbach, the magazine’s new AD, for getting this issue to the finish line!).
So we’re going to make this week a full-on feast of “FEAST” on our blog. We think this will be a nice way to present the reality of how designs can change from the designer’s hands to final execution, and to celebrate the arrival of a long-expected labor of love for Katy, Liz, Kirsten, and Becky on our team.
Today, a before and after of the first issue’s cover. The TOKY team designed this WEEKS ago (and were asked to keep the subject on the hush-hush) and finally saw the printed copies for the first time last night. The changes that we noted are subtle but interesting for students of design: the red FEAST logo has gone yellow and lost it’s shading behind Tuan Lee’s monumental burger, our more understated white type headline has been boxed in honkin’ white bars, and the lack of yellow highlights in the above-the-logo teasers. Otherwise… pretty much what we designed.
Tomorrow: the White Barn Burgers feature story — before and after.
July 2010
Artist Ann Hamilton opened her show “stylus” at the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts last night. Hamilton’s work is known for its deep conceptual resonances and playful wit, and “stylus” is no exception.
TOKY is honored to have been chosen to collaborate with Hamilton and the Pulitzer team to create the show’s identity, catalogue, and website. The site and catalogue are concieved to be works in progress, evolving and growing over the lifespan of the show, so check back frequently. We have no idea what’s coming next ourselves…
The show runs through January 22, 2010. For more information see the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts site.
July 2010
We got word this week that the 2010 Communication Arts Design Annual juries have selected two TOKY projects for publication. Both the AIGA 15 Show Call for Entries and the Thanksgiving Holiday Card for the Saint Louis Public Library Foundation are in; both are for non-profit clients trying to do a lot with a little. They both rely on a sharp concept, perfect copywriting and an almost minimal design aesthetic. The Design Annual is published every November, and is often seen as one of the most exclusive design competitions.
July 2010
The 2010 Festival season at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis just ended last week, and they’re kicking off the 2011 season with a brand new site. Out with the circa 2004 frills and faux-Victorian embellishments; in with sleek design, highly functional navigation and rock-solid development on TOKY’s MYOS CMS platform. The site ties into OTSL’s Tessitura back-end CRM and e-commerce system, making this site simple on the surface and complex below the surface. In the spirit of OTSL’s famous lawn parties, here’s a champagne toast to the new site.
July 2010
This week a couple of new client projects have had some nice press. First, the DavidRichard Contemporary gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico debuted to glowing reports in Art & Antiques magazine and in the Santa Fe Reporter (no, we didn’t do the site). Then, on Tuesday, Metro’s new Downtown Trolley launched as a part of the Core of Discovery work we’ve been up to eyeballs working on, and got some nice news coverage.We love working for great clients who really make a difference in their communities.
