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!

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!

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.

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!

Outdoor signage, with a chalkboard that staff can update daily

Exterior signage

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.