29 entries
Author of Entries By Eric Thoelke
President + Creative Director
eric@toky.com
February 2010

TOKY had a great night at this year’s ADDY awards, our best ever. We took home Best of Show for Print and the Judge’s Special Citation for Excellence — in addition to eight other ADDYs in categories from video to brochures, from posters to marketing for museums. We also took eight certificates of excellence, which is the runner-up prize.
Here’s the complete list:
Best of Show, Print: St. Louis Public Library Foundation Holiday Cards
Judge’s Special Citation for Excellence: Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts “Staging Old Masters” Photography
ADDY Award: Thinking Cap Identity
ADDY Award: Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts “Staging Old Masters” Inserts
ADDY Award: Chaminade College Prep View Book
ADDY Award: Stranger Than Fiction Gala Invitation
ADDY Award: St. Louis Public Library Foundation Holiday Cards
ADDY Award: Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts “Staging Old Masters” Photography
ADDY Award: Dr. Barry Singer “Carrolle’s Story” video
ADDY Award: Unconscious Poster
Addy Certificate: McCarthy Building Companies Web Site
Addy Certificate: Mississippi Bluffs Brand Identity
Addy Certificate: St. Louis Public Library Foundation Logo
Addy Certificate: JJCA Architects Website
Addy Certificate: Grahawk Properties Website
Addy Certificate: Chaminade College Preparatory School Viewbook Photography
Addy Certificate: Opera Theatre of Saint Louis Spring Gala Invitation
Addy Certificate: Susan and David Sherman Birthday Invitation
Congratulations to our clients and the TOKY teams responsible for this great showing!
February 2010

We got a look at the new Design Review from the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA), and we’re proud to see our “Dan Flavin” and “Light Project” websites for The Pulitzer Foundation looking so good. The AIGA Design Review is one of the top awards in the design profession, and we’re humbled and honored to be the only St. Louis area firm included this year.
Winning this award means the Pulitzer sites will become part of the permanent collection of the Denver Art Museum, where the AIGA Archives are housed. It will join several other AIGA winners the TOKY team has, going all the way back to 1990. Search the AIGA Archives online here.
February 2010

TOKY and long-time client HOK launched the newest in a long line of projects last week — and this one’s been a long time coming. We started conceptual work on the HOK History & Lore site way back in 2007. Since then the TOKY team has been working with HOK’s great archivists, writers, technologists, and project managers to build a comprehensive timeline of their major projects, people and events. Even cooler, the site encourages others to add their memories to the timeline through interactive tools.
February 2010

The site we developed for Saint Louis University’s Parks College of Engineering went live Friday. Following on the heels of our well-received Parks view book, we worked hand in hand with the SLU Parks team pulling off one of the largest, most complex sites we’ve ever designed and developed. And it’s all the better that, like McCarthy.com, it’s built on TOKY’s proprietary MYOS Content Management System, making it faster and easier for the SLU team to update. Great work by Jay, Tyler, Melissa, Kathy, Jacob, and the rest of the TOKY web team!
February 2010

Mary and I are still buzzed about making ALIVE Magazine’s BUZZ list for Midtown Alley, our not-quite-downtown urban neighborhood. We’ve been lucky to find a part of our city that’s ready for rebirth as that most elusive of alchemies: the residential/creative/dining destination that still manages to be free of pretension, over-investment by love-em-and-leave-em investors, or suburban chains. Mary and I, along with our friend Jassen Johnson and many of our neighbors, were wined and dined Friday night at ALIVE’s Buzz-fete. Join us in the neighborhood that’s been called St. Louis best restaurant district!
February 2010

From ABC News:
St. Louis, the city of red-brick, 19th century architectural jewels and diverse neighborhoods, has been named one of this year’s Dozen Distinctive Destinations by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
The National Trust announced the winners of the annual contest Wednesday, but for the first time, the organization also invited the public to pick a “fan favorite” by voting online through Feb. 28 at http://www.PreservationNation.org/ddd.
Communities are chosen on the basis of their ability to “offer cultural and recreational experiences different from those found at the typical vacation destination,” the organization said. Dynamic downtowns, stunning architecture, cultural diversity and a commitment to historic preservation are among the criteria.
January 2010

The first Pecha Kucha Night in St. Loo was an electrifying success tonight at BRIDGE, the new downtown (and under downtown) nightspot. Organized by members of HOK Architects, TOKY, Switch and lots of other great folks, the evening gathered a standing-room-only crowd (beyond the fire marshal’s liking) to listen to 14 great presenters talk about how to move our region forward. The beer was great, the conversation wonderful, the passion evident, the sparks tangible. Let’s do it again February 20 in a PK Night for Haiti. See pkstl.com for details.
January 2010

TOKY work has been nominated for 16 Addys in this year’s Ad Club of St. Louis “best of” review.
For us, the cool part is that we were nominated in so many different categories, for doing so many different kinds of things: web sites, print brochures, brand identity, photography, high-end invitations and holiday cards, posters and video storytelling.
Here’s a list of our nominations:
See you February 18th at the awards ceremony!
January 2010
TOKY will be included in “Typography 31″, the annual review of the Type Director’s Club, the leading international organization whose purpose is to support excellence in typography, both in print and on screen. We’re in with the banners that TOKY’s Katy Fischer created for the Saint Louis Public Library, art directing LA artist Noah Woods. This latest honor means that our Library work has now led to a regional Addy, a silver National Addy, Graphis Design annual, PRINT Design Annual, TDC Annual and AIGA-STL show wins. See more on TOKY’s Flickr set.
January 2010

We got an emailed call for entries for the 2011 Design Annual from international design publishing powerhouse GRAPHIS this week, and it took us all of a few nanoseconds to realize that the image they were using to promote the 2010 Design Annual was one of our pieces. Specifically, it’s one of the banners we designed (and Noah Woods illustrated) for the St. Louis Public Library Foundation. The attaboys started rolling in from our friends and colleagues across the country, which made all of us in our humble loft in Midtown St. Loo feel very worldly indeed. Thanks, Graphis!
January 2010
TOKY’s Associate Creative Director and photographer Geoff Story got the last word in the January 2010 St. Louis Magazine. Geoff’s collection of antique glass slides turned up a mysterious and silent little beauty, which the magazine ran on its “Flashback” page. 
January 2010
I’m honored to have joined the Board of Directors of the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis. The Contemporary has long been a friend of TOKY, and we’ve spent a great deal of effort over the last several years in helping them promote their various fundraising efforts. Joining their Board will, I hope, allow us to make even more progress to help this vital institution gain the support and recognition it deserves in St. Louis, in the Midwest, and in the world of contemporary art. Check them out at www.contemporarystl.org
December 2009
The new HOW Magazine “In-House Design Awards” Annual competition features a book for Perkins+Will architects that TOKY Senior Designer Liz Mohl created last year. Liz designed the book while in P+W’s Chicago-based design department, before moving to St. Louis and landing at TOKY. Way to go, Liz!!