Last week we celebrated the 10 year work anniversary of Jay David, our web team ACD, with a surprise party, too much food, some great gifts and a fantastic video surprise: a 2 minute video from the legendary (or infamous) Fred and Sharon’s Movies! Not only was Jay surprised but also embarrassed beyond belief. Mission accomplished!
All this week we’re taking a look at the art direction and design TOKY did for St. Louis’ new FEAST Magazine. Our “Tablescapes” concept was a fantastical cityscape made of crockery, populated with miniature people to make it appear larger than life — and tongue in cheek.
After Feast staff shopped for 60+ products from six stores (OK, seven including the mini people), we got the shot list down to 41 unique shots. Photographer Ashley Gieseking then shot over 500 images to get the final 30 raw files needed. All of the photography was done in TOKY’s in-house photo studio, all in one loooong day. After the initial retouching and image clipping, we spent the next two days stitching it together in a massive retouching marathon, and we had three shots for the spreads above. Whew! Thank goodness it didn’t get changed after we turned it over to the editors.
Special shout outs to Ashley for her dedication and patience!
Friday’s New York Times featured an article starring our man John Foster and his efforts to preserve the works of outsider artist Ralph Lanning. Let’ s let the great gray lady tell part of the the story:
“Lanning died in December at 93, and his family scheduled an artwork auction on the lawns. Mr. Foster persuaded the Kohler Foundation in Wisconsin, which finances outsider art preservation, to buy the sculptures as gifts for the university’s campus. He represented Kohler at the sale on April 9, paying more than $1,000 for unwieldy pieces. “I held my card up and never put it down,” he said.”
Read the full article here.
TOKY’s building in Midtown Alley has gone through a lot of changes since its construction in 1913, evolving from one of the first Ford dealerships west of the Mississippi. In the 90s the place was known far and wide as the home of Ramp Riders, the best indoor skateboarding club in the city.
Kirsten found a great article written by someone who lived through that time, filled with great photos and news clips. The shot above is where much of the TOKY print team now sit!
http://oneguysstl.blogspot.com/2010/02/ramp-riders-part-1-of-at-least-60.html
St. Louis now has its own Egotist: thestlouisegotist.com. The Egotist is an online creative hub focused on the local creative community, and St. Louis is one of a handful of cities to have one. We’re not sure who runs or manages this site, and we’re not sure we care — but we do know that we think its yet another great asset for this town.
For the launch, they asked if they could feature TOKY as the first studio profile. Check out the link below for Eric’s responses to the few interview questions. It may help understand how we do things around here:
“TOKY is devoted to the arts. We’ll do everything we can to spread the word about the fantastic scene here. We’ll do whatever we can to build attendance, bring in the best artists and performers, and keep the money coming in to make it all happen. Then we’re not competing with just Des Moines for talent and reputation, but Santa Fe and Austin and New Orleans and Portland and San Francisco and Chicago and New York.”
We’re honored to have been invited to speak at the AdClub’s upcoming “Beyond The Addys” luncheon event, Thursday, May 6, at Maggiano’s Little Italy in The Boulevard on Brentwood.
We’ll be on a panel with creatives from Rodgers Townsend, Cannonball and other agencies. We’ll be “going behind the scenes to look at campaigns that won ADDYs in this year’s competition: how the idea originated, how those concepts are pitched to clients” .. and we’ll probably blather on about our team and point of view. I’m sure it will be more fun than I make it sound, due mostly to quantities of expense-report purchased beer.
More information at the AdClub’s site, or by calling 314.231.4185, or writing nanadclub@aol.com.
After many months of coming soon messages, thanks to getting pushed to the back of the line for client work, we’re pleased to finally announce that we’ve relaunched our site. This is the second step in our roll out, since there’s a much larger section to come later this Summer. For the next step, we have this grandiose idea of putting the entire project archives of almost all of the work from the last 13 years of TOKY’s existence… that’s a lot of work to write about, gather and photograph.
For now, we have select projects available from the home circle navigation, with full screen case studies of a few projects and announcements, and our People section has been revamped with new ways to find out random information about the people you may already be working with. Visit TOKY.com for more.
St. Louis Magazine gave our Midtown Alley neighborhood a great write-up this month, with extensive quotes from the TOKY team and several of our friends and neighbors. We even got a sweet above-the-masthead blurb and a photo of our building! OK, we actually moved to larger quarters down the block from that building more than two years ago, but apparently there’s an advantage to being slow to remove one’s old banners. The article isn’t online, so buy a copy and read about our emerging slice of urban coolness.
Sometimes during staff meetings we talk about projects, sometimes we talk about company news, and sometimes we play the fiddle.
http://www.vimeo.com/8294380Katy vs. the dull xacto knife, look who won. Where do we keep the mop?
Every other month our staff meeting is pulled from the studio to take place in another setting. Sometimes it’s a baseball game, bar or a park… this time, it was Flamingo Bowl on Washington Avenue. Here are a few pics from the event, we’ll let you judge how productive this meeting was…
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Kathy came for a “very important meeting” and was surprised by the entire team. Congrats to Nate and Kathy and the future Sprehe!
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