TOKY and nine other agencies have teamed up for the Holiday Agency Crawl in St. Louis’ Midtown Alley. Join us Tuesday, December 20th from 5:30 – 8:30pm for a peak inside TOKY, Scorch, Spoke, Atomicdust, Happy Medium, RGG Photo, Back 2 Basics Marketing, Sudden Impact Marketing, and Mercury Labs.

Midtown Alley is one of St. Louis’ fastest growing neighborhoods, a historic section of St. Louis just east of SLU and west of downtown. Once known as Automobile Row, Midtown Alley is now home to many of the city’s hottest creative agencies, best-known restaurants and residences.

Come out and join us for live music, free drinks and noshes and all the tipsy creatives you ever wanted to see.

Late October in St. Louis was an incredible time. Yes, the Cardinals were making that unbelievable World Series run. But Team TOKY had another reason to celebrate — Eric Thoelke was honored as a Local Legend by AIGA St. Louis, his acceptance speech a PK Night-style flip through 15 years of TOKY history. It was a fantastic time.

Here’s a bit from the nomination write-up for Eric that was read that evening:

Today, with nearly 30 employees and a newly opened office in Washington, DC, TOKY Branding + Design is one of the most awarded creative shops in the Midwest focused on education, healthcare, culture, and nonprofits.Ericʼs commitment to using creative communications to improve St. Louis is part of the firmʼs DNA. TOKY provides high-level branding and identity work to local nonprofits and cultural institutions, including some of the most revered, at a discounted rate. In addition, Eric invests TOKYʼs staff time and financial resources into many St. Louis fundraisers, from FORM Design Week (Presenting Sponsor) to Food Outreachʼs A Tasteful Affair event (eight-year major sponsor). Eric not only mentors his staff professionally — especially young designers whose talent he spots — but he fosters an environment in which a large number of staff donate time or artwork to causes they themselves champion, from Foodstock to BicycleWORKS, PK Night to the St. Louis Arts Project.

Mary and Eric

TOKY sends its congratulations to longtime St. Louis-based designer Paul Bussman for his own 2011 Local Legend award, and we thank Kory Waschick for sharing these photos from the event.

Want to be a part of the largest food-collection bicycle ride in the country? Grab your bike and join us for Cranksgiving: THIS Sunday, November 6th, at 10 a.m. at Schlafly Bottleworks!

Now in its sixth year, Cranksgiving is hosted by BicycleWORKS, with proceeds going to our friends at Food Outreach. Riders can choose from a 5-, 10-, or 25-mile route, on which they’ll stop by several local grocery stores to pick up non-perishable food items to donate to the cause. Last year, more than 650 riders collected more than 6,000 food items, making it the largest Cranksgiving event in the country!

TOKY has long supported BicycleWORKS and their many fine projects. T-shirts for this year’s event are currently sold out, but you can still order yours online. You’ll be able to pick it up the week after the event at BWORKS. Once again, all proceeds from the sales go directly to Food Outreach.

For more information about Cranksgiving, visit bworks.org/bikeworks. We hope to see you there!

19th century bootjacks stand in as trophy heads.

In the 1970’s film Paper Moon, young Tatum O’Neill as Addie Loggins was usually seen tightly clutching her “Cremo” cigar box, the perfect container for her collection of all she owned in the world — a twenty dollar bill, mementos, penny candy and dreams. In some ways, this boxed collection was her safe — they were the things she held precious and the box never left her sight.

Most designers and artists I know are, by nature, collectors. They collect things because they are visual people, and because they seek inspiration. Finding something and placing it on a shelf means that you have, in a way, given new life to that object. This selection process has its roots in childhood. Picking up a shiny piece of tumbled glass or a shell on a beach — the spying of your first “sidewalk penny” — these are moments of discovery that most of us can share. The very act of choosing one thing over another means you have given the selected object a chance for a new life, a chance to be recognized or perhaps even shown to others.

Like young Addie Loggins, my new exhibition at Missouri State University contains things I hold close and dear, objects culled from a lifetime of collecting. This art exhibition at the Brick City Gallery reveals my wonder of everyday, authentic things — my love of art by self-taught makers — a fresh look at things we may have lost touch with in our new century. What I hope to achieve in Self-Taught Art: Pop Culture & Objects of Curiosity is to bring awareness to the idea of interpretation. This is an exhibition where I made nothing and I made everything.

Here, one will see “found objects” as common as a handmade hiker’s backpack, made complete with a “make-do” chair back for the frame. Its front, consisting of a rolled-up red and black checked wool shirt, sleeping bag and ax, were tied and bundled just as the hiker left it some 40-plus years earlier. To me, this  object is storytelling at its best. Though I know “what” this is, I interpret it quite differently. I see it as a found, “accidental assemblage” — something the artist Robert Rauschenberg could have certainly identified with.

To that point, what would a collection of primitive bootjacks have in common with an old, round Coca-Cola sign, or “button” as it was called? The answer would be two things: both just happen to be about 50 years of age, and both have now lost their original, intended purpose. With the bootjacks, I am forcing the issue of their accidental anthropomorphic shapes by the simple act of hanging them on a wall, by denying their original use. Bootjacks were originally made for one purpose only: helping a person remove their boots. Look at them as I have them displayed, and suddenly we have a group of horned animals, trophy heads. As for the Coke sign, with its white, paint-crackled surface, perfect rust and patina, this sign is no longer doing its job as an outdoor advertising sign. Today, it hangs as an object about advertising. We look at it now, up close and personal, and we examine it as something authentic. Made of substantial steel and paint that has transformed with age, we see this now as an example of iconic typography married with cracks and rust. It has its lost former life, like a dead butterfly displayed on white cotton.

This is an installation that exhibits important paintings and sculpture by self-taught artists along with found rocks, pig cutting boards, a hand-painted African-American barber sign, police mugshots of smiling prostitutes, shooting gallery targets, paint-by-number paintings, vintage game boards, odd press photos, terra cotta garden planters, carnival knock-downs, Vietnam protest signs, and numerous “things” bound together by a common vision. To put it simply, by taking a new look at common — and some not so common — objects, you just might find art.

A 1940s police target becomes a "pop art" find.

These two rusty signs come from a religious art environment in Alabama created by the self-professed Reverend W.C. Rice.

Two visitors inspect the rants of visionary self-taught artists Howard Finster.

The archetypal "pig cutting board," once the projects of 8th grade industrial arts students, reveal similarities and differences in this collection.

This sawfish blade, pristine and upright, has outstanding sculptural qualities that pushes it into the realm of Modernist art.

A pair of matching paint-by-number paintings are displayed in the original frames.

A 1940's steel and enamel Coca-Cola sign, transformed by time and weather, becomes an object of curiosity.

This past weekend I had the opportunity to sport the new BicycleWORKS cycling jersey at the 2011 THF Realty Gateway Cup. BicycleWORKS asked me to design their 2011 jersey for the Bike MS: Express Scripts Gateway Getaway Ride – which takes place next weekend.

TOKY has been a long-time supporter of BicycleWORKS and would like to congratulate them on their new space in Soulard. Be sure to stop by September 17th for the Grand Opening. More information at www.stlbicycleworks.org.

We admit it, we’re type geeks.

We love belonging to the Type Director’s Club, and pour over their annual “Best Of” catalogues arguing about new typefaces and posters. It’s a sickness.

So it’s a total geekfest to find out that we have two winners in this year’s TDC57 juried review of the best in typographic design. Our annual holiday cards for the St. Louis Public Library were selected, as was our logo for Mysterios de Mayo for the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis.  Our winners from last year’s TDC Show and from 2009 are in our archives. The printed catalogue should be out this autumn.

The opening of Typography 57 was in June at the Cooper Union Gallery in New York City. Sagmeister looks happy.

We love it when projects we really get into get into the Communication Arts Design Annual. This year, we’re pleased that the judges have selected our catalogue for Laumeier Sculpture Park’s Jessica Stockholder show for inclusion.

Marilou Knode and Kim Humphries of Laumeier are wonderful curators, working with Stockholder’s subversive and day-glo work. Knode and Humphries asked us to pair images of Stockholder’s assemblies with poems by Mary Jo Bang; we broke out the Astrobrites, astroturf and assorted gatefolds. The CA Design Annual should be hitting desks around the world next month.

Next weekend, The Luminary Center for the Arts opens the doors to the second annual FORM Design Show, featuring the works of over 50 architects, interior designers, furniture designers, showrooms and craftspeople. TOKY is proud to be a presenting sponsor again this year.

FORM is presented by The Luminary Center as a forum for exceptional designers to showcase their work, connect with a community of other designers and sell directly to supporters. Proceeds go directly to the designers, and to support The Luminary, which produces and presents innovative art, music and cultural projects.

On Friday night, August 12, the weekend kicks off with a VIP event, featuring a silent auction for exclusive items from the designers, a DJ, complimentary food and drinks provided by Duff’s, Harvest, Labeebee’s, Randall’s and Schlafly. The Keynote Speaker Zoe Ryan, Curator of Architecture and Design at the Art Institute of Chicago. Here’s a nice article about her from Dwell. //tickets//

General Admission tickets for Saturday let you experience cutting-edge contemporary design and take part in the panel discussions and presentations throughout the day. //tickets//

We’re looking forward to seeing what James and Brea McAnally of Luminary have up their sleeves. See you there!

TOKY welcomes Stephen Schenkenberg to the team! Stephen is an accomplished communications strategist, writer, and editor with 15 years of experience working across media. He joins TOKY as Senior Strategist, with emphasis on Content Strategy and Brand Strategy.

Before joining TOKY, Stephen ran his own Schenkenberg Studio, with a client list that included architect Rocio Romero, the Saint Louis Art Museum, the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, and Claremont McKenna College. Stephen also spent more than three years as the Editor-in-Chief of St. Louis Magazine and Stlmag.com, helping oversee the redesign and relaunch of those publications. During his tenure, Stephen helped earn the print publication two National City & Regional Magazine Awards and introduced a suite of subject-specific blogs and a monthly podcast series, which he hosted.

Stephen earned a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies from Northwestern University and attended the international Stanford Professional Publishing Course. His 15-year career has spanned journalism and organizational communications, traditional print and modern online publishing, with a consistent focus on the arts and not-for-profit sectors. Additional clients have included Washington University in St. Louis, New York University, the Center of Creative Arts (COCA), The Believer, The Quarterly Conversation, and Wisconsin Historical Society Press, for whom he edited three books.

Among Stephen’s side projects is curating ReadingGass.org, a website he launched in 2007 to explore the work of decorated literary figure William H. Gass. Stephen now spends part of his weekends editing the definitive collection of interviews conducted with Gass over the past four decades.

Stephen and his wife, Tamara, lived for part of 2010 and 2011 in Berlin, but they have resettled in St. Louis, where he was born and raised. They love just about anything connected to food, wine, and the arts.

Welcome, Stephen!

AIGA-St. Louis is bringing together an intimate group of passionate creatives to discuss key business issues related to design. The intent is to foster honest and open conversation that will connect the community of designers and inspire professionally.

Join us for our first panel discussion:
Too Big… Too Small… Just Right // How to grow your business, how to decide if you even want to, and what to consider.

Thursday, May 26th, 7-9pm
Centene Center for the Arts & Education, 3547 Olive Street, 4th Floor

TOKY and panelists from other selected design firms will represent various stages of company growth, from freelance to large firm, and will speak to the challenges and joys of business growth. An open discussion will focus on how to determine the “perfect size” for an individual’s business, and discuss strategies on how to get there.

Seating is limited to 15 audience members. Light refreshments served, and it’s open to all on a first RSVP basis. Please join us! RSVP by May 24th to dc@dianncage.com