Kirsten O’Loughlin | TOKY Branding + Design

11 entries

Author of Entries By Kirsten O'Loughlin

Senior Interactive Designer
kirsten@toky.com

October 2011

Possessions: Romaire’s Scarecrow

A once-upon-a-time client and now good friend of mine, Lee Romaire, is a special-effects artist and sculptor in Los Angeles. He’s created dead body props for shows like “Six Feet Under,” dead cow props for War of the Worlds, and even re-sculpted the head for Abe Lincoln at the Disneyland Great Moments With Mr. Lincoln exhibit. I would often do work for trade with him, knowing that he would send me something unusual and well-crafted.

Scarecrow, Lee Romaire

This particular artwork, which he sent to me years ago, seems fitting for this month of All Hallow’s Eve. It has a special place in my studio at home, and helps keep the vampires away year-round!

Lee Romaire sculpting Lincoln

This is the second in a new show-and-tell series in which TOKY staff write about an extra special object — book, artwork, artifact — in their possession.

Kirsten O'Loughlin

Posted by Kirsten O'Loughlin
Possessions

September 2011

New Work: Tandus Flooring Website

At TOKY, we love spaces — buildings, interior design, landscape architecture. (Heck, we’re even working with an arts organization called SPACES.) Earlier this year, we had the chance to engage with an internationally prominent company focused on the ground level of great spaces: Tandus Flooring.

Headquartered in Dalton, Georgia, and with showrooms around the world, Tandus is considered a pioneer in its field — its lists of many ‘firsts’ includes the fact that it was the first flooring company to bring modular carpet to North America.

When Tandus came to TOKY to completely overhaul its website, we knew that the company’s mantra — “Innovates & Inspires” — would serve as the project’s framework. We activated the statement “Innovates & Inspires” for the navigation system, placing the four main content areas of the site within these two key words.

Within this framework, TOKY created a flexible template structure that accommodates multiple layers of content across in-depth product pages, extensive case studies, a timeline chronicling Tandus’ record of innovation, and details about its commitment to sustainability.

We really enjoyed working with this new space-improving client, and we’re very gratified that the site’s been a success for the client.

Kirsten O'Loughlin

Posted by Kirsten O'Loughlin
Interactive

September 2011

Website for Mirato

Our neighbors next door design beautiful eco-friendly furniture—we teamed up with them to build a new website and implement a fresh brand (which included a name change, from Tork Design to Mirato).

The new site is fully content managed and built on Eero™, our proprietary CMS. It works seamlessly across a variety of devices — tablets, mobile phones and desktops — and will accommodate their needs as they expand their product line.

Browse through the site while drooling over some amazing tables, desks, benches and shelving.
www.miratodesign.com

Kirsten O'Loughlin

Posted by Kirsten O'Loughlin
Branding + Design, Interactive

July 2011

Saint Louis Welcomes The World Chess Hall of Fame This Fall

We just launched a preliminary site for The World Chess Hall of Fame, a new venue opening in the Central West End in September, across the street from the Chess Club & Scholastic Center of Saint Louis. Since opening in 2008, the Club has helped our city become a national hub for the game—Saint Louis earned the “Chess City of the Year” title from the United States Chess Federation for 2009 and 2011.

The grand opening is set for September 9, 2011, at 4652 Maryland Avenue in the Central West End. The full site will launch around then as well, with a growing collection of Grand Masters, Exhibitions dedicated to the art of Chess, and Community Outreach resources.

Kirsten O'Loughlin

Posted by Kirsten O'Loughlin
Arts and Culture Branding, Development, Interactive

February 2011

A New Website for The Saint Louis Brewery

Also known for brewing our very own Schlafly beer and serving up great times at their two breweries — The Tap Room and Bottleworks — The Saint Louis Brewery came to us for a complete overhaul of their website.

We worked closely over the past year with the awesome folks at Schlafly to build a smart site that has plenty of room to grow in the years to come. Built on Eero™, our proprietary CMS, the site boasts a detailed and tasty portfolio of Schlafly’s wide variety of brews, a calendar chock full of nearly daily events and an extensive community section complete with an employee blog.

The backend is customized to accommodate frequent updates to the many styles of beers brewed at Schlafly, to the events calendar and restaurant pages, and throughout the entire site as Schlafly continues to evolve and grow.

We’re very excited to have been a part of this effort with Schlafly. They are indeed one of the bedrocks of the St. Louis community. Three cheers to the new kings of St. Louis Beer!

Kirsten O'Loughlin

Posted by Kirsten O'Loughlin
Announcements, Development, Interactive, Premium Products Branding

February 2011

A New Website for Mid-America Transplant Services

In the midst of the snowmageddon meltdown that didn’t happen, we launched a new site for Mid-America Transplant Services, a not-for-profit organization serving regional organ and tissue procurement for eastern Missouri, southern Illinois, and northeast Arkansas.

MTS has a solid mission—to save lives through excellence in organ and tissue donation. They partner with the national Donate Life^® registry program for Arkansas, Illinois and Missouri, and have extensive programs for donor families dedicated to honoring their loved one’s gift of life.

Before diving into design or development, we worked closely with MTS to determine their needs: their current site was cumbersome to update, and did not accommodate the extensive volume of images and content they needed on the site. We collaborated with MTS on a detailed site map and wireframes of key pages, whittling them to the last detail before we began design.

The result is a fully content-managed, flexible site built on Eero™, our proprietary Content Management System. We also applied a brighter, more contemporary look and feel to their brand, with an updated color palette and typographic adjustments.

The site is a valuable resource of education and information for medical professionals, donor families, recipients & the general public. It also offers a place of respite in the Memories & Miracles section, where anyone can submit and share their story of donation, or browse through a collection of memories from others involved in the donation process.

Kirsten O'Loughlin

Posted by Kirsten O'Loughlin
Development, Healthcare Branding, How We Work, Interactive

August 2010

TOKY designs FEAST’s site: the Devil is in the details

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

Kirsten O'Loughlin

Posted by Kirsten O'Loughlin
Announcements, Featured, How We Work, Interactive

March 2010

Dance as Design

I was lucky to spot an ad for the Aszure Barton & Artists show at the Touhill this weekend, and after perusing their site I realized I haven’t seen really great modern dance since I moved here from Portland. I’ve also seen my share of really bad modern dance, which can make you cringe in your seat like an amateur improv poetry night.

I’m no expert on the genre of dance, modern or traditional, but I’m pretty particular about any performance art I’m willing to pay for, as I tend to find that most of it is cliché or overdone. The videos on the site convinced me this would at least be something new.

Watching the two movements by Aszure this weekend, Busk and Blue Soup, I realized how a great modern performance appeals to me in a similar fashion as a well designed book, typeface, website, poster or package. These two performances in particular felt like they were choreographed by a seasoned and talented graphic designer. The simplicity of the colors and costume, or in some cases a lack of costume, the pure motion of the dancers and the strength and poignancy of the subject matter in both movements all connected in a way I had never experienced before in a performance.

Dance St. Louis apparently signed the company to this performance before they started to hit it big. Hopefully we’ll get them back again soon.

Kirsten O'Loughlin

Posted by Kirsten O'Loughlin
Musings

February 2010

Design for the Other 90%

On a recent trip to Portland Oregon, I was fortunate to have a personal tour of the new Mercy Corps world headquarters building (designed by THA Architecture) from a good friend who was then dispatched to Haiti within the next few days. The Cooper-Hewitt Design for the Other 90% exhibit was on display at the MC Action Center, and it reminded me how some design CAN change and is in fact changing the world. Innovative thoughtful products like the Bamboo Treadle Pump and the LifeStraw help the poor in a multitude of developing countries gain access to safe water for farming and drinking.

WorldBike brings a new meaning to what hipsters would call artbikes, designing low-cost load-carrying bicycles capable of carrying hundreds of pounds of cargo for entrepreneurs and consumers in developing countries.

Good old humble graphic design wasn’t represented among the high impact life-changing products on display, beyond the beautifully designed catalogue and award-winning website. My tour guide however did mention that Mercy Corps is trying to make the new Action Center a more friendly and welcoming experience. Hopefully they will move away from the cold typography, stark banners and way-finding, and make their interactive stations more comfortable. I think they can achieve a sense of urgency and seriousness about changing the world without feeling and looking like a bank.

Kirsten O'Loughlin

Posted by Kirsten O'Loughlin
Causes

September 2009

Midtown earns Best Restaurant Neighborhood in RFT’s Best of St. Louis

We’re so proud of our neighborhood!
This just after the first Midtown Alley Street Festival this past weekend, which featured nearly all of the restaurants listed! We also learned that the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts earned Best Museum, The Fountain on Locust won Best Ice Cream Parlor, Pappy’s Smokehouse won Best BBQ, The U won Best French Fries AND The Good Pie earned best Lunch Specials. Phew! We are rockin’ down here!!

A New Orleans-style Fête

Letterpress

Get your ink on! We designed an invitation for a birthday bash recently and printed it on a Vandercook to get that oh so wonderful letterpress feeling. Printed on a local paper made from recycled clothing – www.archpaper.net.

Kirsten O'Loughlin

Posted by Kirsten O'Loughlin
Poster

11 entries Author of Entries By Kirsten O'Loughlin Senior Interactive Designer kirsten@toky.com

11 entries

Author of Entries By Kirsten O'Loughlin

Senior Interactive Designer
kirsten@toky.com