Identity | TOKY Branding + Design

Archive for the Identity Category

January 2012

Art of the Menu Spotlights Baileys’ Range

Under Consideration’s Art of the Menu design blog, which catalogues “the underrated creativity of menus from around the world,” has turned its spotlight on TOKY’s identity and design work for Baileys’ Range. We first announced this project in this November blog post, if you’d like some background on how it came together. But be sure to click through to the Art of the Menu piece, published yesterday. We love the site — whether it’s our work being featured or work from our international peers. Thanks to the site’s editors for the nod!

Stephen Schenkenberg

Posted by Stephen Schenkenberg
Awards + Press, Branding + Design, Identity, Premium Products Branding, St. Louis

January 2012

Communication Arts Honors “Core of Discovery” Branding in New Typography Annual

In November, we were thrilled to announce that for the second year in a row, TOKY would be included in Communication Arts’ Typography Annual, the magazine’s juried review of the best typographic design around the world. There were 1,723 projects submitted, and just 150 winners.

This year’s judges — Richard Kegler, Erik Spiekermann, and Tiffany Wardle de Sousa — selected TOKY’s identity for Core of Discovery, which colorfully integrates downtown St. Louis’ historic attractions into a single brand system. TOKY, working with our strategic partners at The Standing Partnership, developed the concept, the name for the district, the brand strategy, media plan, all collateral, and advertising.

Communication Arts’ January/February Typography Annual has now hit TOKY HQ, so we’re pleased to share this look at a few of our favorite pages!

Stephen Schenkenberg

Posted by Stephen Schenkenberg
Awards + Press, Community Branding, Featured, Identity, St. Louis, Travel

December 2011

Crown Square helps Old North St. Louis win highest honors from EPA’s Office of Sustainable Communities

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that Old North St. Louis Restoration Group is in Washington D.C. today to receive the 2011 “National Award for Smart Growth Achievement”, awarded to the community by the Environmental Protection Agency. Old North was awarded for “Overall Excellence in Smart Growth”, the highest honor from the EPA’s Office of Sustainable Communities.

The next part made us stand up and cheer: ”A specific effort cited by the EPA was the revitalization of two main blocks of the neighborhood — 14th Street north from Warren Street to St. Louis Avenue (nearly to the door of the Karandzieffs‘ venerable Crown Candy Kitchen) — into something called Crown Square. The $35 million project involved the redevelopment of 27 buildings along 14th Street and surrounding side streets. It resulted in 80 new households in an area that had been largely abandoned, and the opening of a growing number of new locally owned businesses.”

Way back in 2006, TOKY branded the Crown Village district and the Crown Square development. We designed the logo after being blown away by the wonderful line of old commercial store signs that line the old 14th Street Mall (above photo courtesy of the great Built St. Louis blog). We helped position Crown Village as an alternative to the overheated Washington Avenue Loft District with our tag line “Great City Living, Without the Lofty Price”. And it was no easy task to get the Karandzieffs to allow their Crown Candy Kitchen to become the public keystone of the new brand.

Hats off to Sean Thomas and his never-take-no-for-an-answer squad of Old North visionaries on their much-deserved award.

Eric Thoelke

Posted by Eric Thoelke
Causes, Community Branding, Identity, Real Estate Branding, St. Louis

November 2011

New Work: Launching the Baileys’ Range Brand

Prominent St. Louis restaurateur Dave Bailey has opened four restaurants, and TOKY has been proud to craft — and sustain — the identity for each one: Baileys’ Chocolate Bar; Rooster; Bridge; and now Baileys’ Range, a bustling burgers-and-shakes spot at the corner of 10th and Olive in downtown St. Louis.

The restaurant’s name has a few different meanings — the range of options on the menu, yes, but also the open natural landscape, the range out on the farm. (All the beef here is grass-fed, free range, and local.) We knew, though, that we wanted to steer clear of all the cliches that can zap the joy out of those very meanings. No Western type. No longhorns.

What we created matches the place: fun, rich with texture, totally unique. From the identity to the menus and signage, we sought to create an authentic, warm, and cheerful vibe for a place you’d be happy to come with your family, have drinks with your friends (hope you have a lot of friends; there are TONS of interesting grown up drink options), or end the evening with a freshly made shake.

The TOKY team greatly enjoyed partnering with Scott Pondrom of Design Deli to create the illustrations you see below in the print, signage, and website work.

The menus need to be easily interchangeable — there’s a new Burger Battle every week!

Toky baileysrange exterior

Outdoor signage, with a chalkboard that staff can update daily

Toky baileysrange wallsign

Exterior signage

Toky baileysrange long table

Bar on the right, loooooong table at center, companion artwork on the far wall. The great interior work was led by Brynne Rinderknecht.

Toky baileysrange website

The soft-opening iteration of the website, www.baileysrange.com

Stephen Schenkenberg

Posted by Stephen Schenkenberg
Branding + Design, Identity, Premium Products Branding, St. Louis

November 2011

“Core of Discovery” Branding Selected for Upcoming Communication Arts Typography Annual

For the second year in a row, TOKY will have work included in Communication Arts’ juried review of the world’s best typographic design. This year, the judges have selected our Core of Discovery branding, a new marketing concept that integrates all of downtown St. Louis’ historic attractions into an easy-to-understand consumer-facing brand system. TOKY, working with our strategic partners at The Standing Partnership, developed the concept, the name for the district, the brand strategy, media plan, all collateral and advertising. The project will be included in the January/February issue of Communication Arts magazine.

Eric Thoelke

Posted by Eric Thoelke
Arts and Culture Branding, Awards + Press, Branding + Design, Community Branding, Featured, Identity, Museum Branding, St. Louis, Travel

October 2011

Photoseed.com Honored as Site of the Week by Communication Arts

TOKY Senior Developer Tyler Craft and I happen to be collectors of historic photos and photogravure prints. (Tyler’s taken his collection to a much deeper place than myself.) When an opportunity arose to work on a project showcasing one of the largest private collections of early photography online, we jumped.

Enter David Spencer (“Spence”), a noted photographic historian, collector, and newspaper photojournalist who has been writing about and collecting early photography for many years. Spence was finally ready to bring his extensive photographic collection to the public, and through various connections came upon meeting Tyler and seeing TOKY’s previous work for collections such as photogravure.com.

After six-plus months of work on random weekends and evenings, we launched an important site and contribution to the photo world (built on Eero™, TOKY’s custom Content Management System). We hope that you will spend some time with PhotoSeed, and that you find beauty in its design and value in its scholarship. We look forward to seeing it grow as Spence continues to add thousands of works to the site throughout the coming years.

We’re also very honored to receive any recognition for work like this, and happy when such a labor of love gets the exposure it deserves.

Visit PhotoSeed.com
View the profile on Communication Arts

Jay David

Posted by Jay David
Eero, Featured, Identity, Interactive, People

September 2011

Logo Lounging

The publishers of the Logo Lounge series of books, the popular compendiums of the best of logo design, have let us know that we’ll have five logos in two upcoming books.

Our logo for SPACES, a California-based arts organization, and a concept for Opera Theatre of Saint Louis have been accepted for Logo Lounge 7. According to the publishers, over 36,000 logos — 36,000! — were submitted to the panel of judges. Some competitions are harder to judge than others.

Three others were selected for inclusion in the Logo Lounge Master Library Series, a best-of-the-best set. These include our 2020 logo for the Catholic Healthcare Association, the Art The Vote logo, and the identity for our own Midtown Alley neighborhood.

Eric Thoelke

Posted by Eric Thoelke
Arts and Culture Branding, Awards + Press, Community Branding, Healthcare Branding, Identity, Midtown Alley, Museum Branding

August 2011

Two in the Type Directors Club Annual

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.

Eric Thoelke

Posted by Eric Thoelke
Announcements, Arts and Culture Branding, Awards + Press, Brochures and Catalogues, Causes, Featured, Identity, Museum Branding, Premium Products Branding

July 2011

New Work: Convening Materials for The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts

We just wrapped up work for New York’s Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. The Foundation presents an annual Convening for Museum Professionals; for this year’s event in San Francisco, they came to TOKY for brand identity, conference materials and a website.

The website solution had to allow the Foundation staff to make updates easily and keep attendees immediately informed of developments throughout the Convening. It was also especially important for attendees to be able to share ideas and start a dialogue. At the event, attendees were provided branded conference materials; the challenge of the print portion of this project was to do more with less. TOKY created a comprehensive conference package, enlisting the silk-screen printing expertise of our friends at Cherokee Street’s All Along Press.

View the Warhol Initiative Convening site

Silk-screened folders and letterhead materials.

An online component that will grow post-conference.

Jay David

Posted by Jay David
Brochures and Catalogues, Identity, Interactive, Museum Branding

May 2011

“Best of Show” and an Embarrassment of Riches in AIGA St.Louis Design Competition

This one has taken a little while for us to post, because, frankly, we were a little embarrassed by it.

In AIGA St. Louis’ 16th Annual Juried Design Show, TOKY did well. We were honored and humbled that we were given awards for “Best of Show”, “Judge’s Choice” (the only one given to a professional organization), and two “Best of Category” awards. Altogether we took home 18 of the total 43 awards given to Professional organizations (the rest were awards to students).

Best in Show: The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, “Ann Hamilton: stylus” catalogue

Judge’s Choice: Washington University Medical School “Century of Excellence” retrospective book

Best of Category / Branding: Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, CAM Rebranding

Best of Category / Books: The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, “Ann Hamilton: stylus” catalogue

Additional Awards:

The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, “Ann Hamilton: stylus” website

Armstrong Teasdale LLC, brand identity

Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, “Contemporary Fund” mailer

Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, “Mysterios de Mayo” identity

Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, website

David Richard Contemporary Gallery, identity (Santa Fe, NM)

Bridge Tap Room, logo and identity materials

Laumeier Sculpture Park, Jessica Stockholder “Grab Grassy Your I’s” exhibit catlogue

Bike St. Louis, “Cranksgiving” poster

Brown School of Social Work, “Social Impact” magazine

Metro, “Core of Discovery” website

St. Louis Public Library Foundation, “Looking Glass” invitation

Schlafly Brewery website

SPACES Gallery (San Jose, CA) identity

Eric Thoelke

Posted by Eric Thoelke
Arts and Culture Branding, Awards + Press, Brochures and Catalogues, Featured, Identity, Interactive, Museum Branding, Poster, Premium Products Branding

May 2011

New CAM wearables

We’re really excited that CAM’s newest wearables are in store! Unfortunately, they probably won’t fit you (since they only come in onesies and kids sizes). So, drop by CAM and get your favorite little person a cool new shirt.

Katy Fischer

Posted by Katy Fischer
Community Branding, Identity, Museum Branding

March 2011

Contemporary Art Museum St.Louis Site a “Communication Arts” Site of the Week

We’re very happy that the new site we designed and developed for CAM has been chosen as a Communication Arts “Web Pick of the Week“.

Every day Communication Arts does a fantastic job selecting a Web Pick of the Day, but it’s always nice when the judges select one of those for special recognition and a more in-depth feature. This is our second Web Pick of the Week from CA (the other here), and we’ve had several CA Web Picks of the Day (here, here, and here).

The site for CAM, now only two months old, was a key part of a total rebranding by TOKY. Look for an in-depth case study on all of the CAM rebranding work, to be featured on this site soon.

The Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis is known for its ever-changing programming and deep community outreach. Exhibits in the main galleries rotate every three months, biweekly mini-shows cycle through its energetic Front Room, and a parade of social events and fundraisers take place every month. Despite this, the Contemporary felt it wasn’t doing enough to present its art and artists in a way that would attract a public beyond die-hard art lovers. They asked TOKY to help broaden their appeal to the general public, take the trepidation out of a trip to see contemporary art, and help the Contemporary become a must-go social destination.

In addition to the site design, TOKY rebranded the museum by its acronym CAM, created a new brand identity, developed a new graphic language and external personality, and began the process of uniting print, advertising, web, and social media strategies.

Read more about the site on the Communication Arts site. Below is an overview of some of the key pages of the site.

Built on Eero, TOKY’s propriety Content Management System, the homepage slideshow automatically pulls the latest events, latest exhibitions and programs onto the home page. Now CAM can update virtually all content on the site easily, and without digging into the code or creating custom graphic assets. Because CAM’s new site is so event focused, it was crucial to hone the workflows so that content entry could be done in one place, and feed out to the areas it needs to appear — and, more importantly, update and archive automatically, eliminating much of the legwork which the previous site had forced on CAM’s staff.

One of the more robust features of the site is the new Calendar. Now CAM can easily feature, categorize, share, and archive events, all while using the site to show more faces of the community and images of events past.

With two galleries which consistently showcase emerging artists, CAM needed a tool to promote and manage ongoing exhibitions. Additionally, the new CAM site can now archive all past exhibitions; they are currently archiving exhibitions from years when CAM was called the Forum for Contemporary Art.

Jay David

Posted by Jay David
Arts and Culture Branding, Awards + Press, Development, Eero, Featured, Identity, Interactive, Museum Branding, Strategy

March 2011

A Double Dip of Logo Lounge

We got the bran’new Logo Lounge 6 book in the mail this week, featuring seven of our logos. Just days later we heard we got another seven in Logo Lounge’s “Master Series” book “Typography and Enclosures”, including logos we’ve done for The Private Residences at the Chase Park Plaza, DOT Foods, Midtown Alley, Art The Vote, Innovate St. Louis, Dialect Consulting and the Catholic Health Association‘s “2020″ initiative.

Each book in the “Master Library” series focuses on a very specific logo design category. We’ve had work in the first four volumes: Initials and Crests, Animals and Mythology, Shapes and Symbols, and now Typography.

Eric Thoelke

Posted by Eric Thoelke
Arts and Culture Branding, Awards + Press, Branding + Design, Community Branding, Identity, Midtown Alley, Premium Products Branding, Real Estate Branding

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