This Friday marks the second annual Flash Camp St. Louis at The City Museum. The best freelancers and and agency flashers in the land will come together once again to talk shop and hopefully learn a few things.

This year I will be presenting a demo called, “Tween, the Impossible Tween” at 3pm. And if you haven’t signed up yet, I think there are still a few seats remaining. Go grab your tickets and I’ll meet you at the 6 story slide.

Beaming from the flattery of being one of the 50 people asked, we brainstormed many ways to spend the hypothetical $10 million. Thinking big wasn’t the problem. Dam the Mississippi at Kimmswick to create a massive recreational lake below St. Louis? Even $10 million wouldn’t get that done. How about paying off ABInBev to get control of the brewery back in St. Louis? Or paying all of our City public school teachers what their counterparts in the County make? All too expensive.

Eventually we came around to an idea we’ve been working on for a while with Grand Center, St. Louis’ arts and culture district, and the neighborhood just west of our home in Midtown Alley. We proposed enlivening this theatre and museum district at night with artists’ sculptural works that deal with light and lighting. Think of it as a 10-block long sculpture park that springs to light at dusk.

We see at least 12 opportunities for light sculpture in the district, from Strauss Park to the Scottish Rite parking garage. The magazine has made us one of two respondents profiled on their website. Check it out, read the article, and tell us what you think!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Shots of last Friday’s Street Fest from the TOKY window throughout the evening. The street was packed for several hours throughout the event, all the way from Garrison to Compton. Likely 2-3 times more people than the previous year, despite the threat of thunderstorms. Thanks to all who came out, and look forward to next years Street Fest!

Bruce Burton has joined TOKY as Senior Designer on the print team, coming to us from the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis.

It’s time once again for Midtown Alley Street Fest. Last years event was a hit, and this one looks to be bigger and better. In just the few short years since we’ve been working in this neighborhood, we’ve seen major improvements like great new restaurants, new businesses and tons of historic old buildings brought back to life. Come by next Friday for free music from 6 bands, food from some of the great spots and tons of other activities. Locust Street from Garrison to Compton will be closed off for pedestrians, and bands will play right on the street. Should be a good night!

Midtown Alley Street Fest 2010
Friday August 20th, 2010
4-11pm on Locust Street from Compton to Garrison

More information and RSVP at the Facebook page

Click here to view the embedded video.

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!

Apparently some enterprising restauranteurs wanted to open a breakfast place in Isla Mujeres this year, but didn’t want to go through the hassle of actually having to work with a design company. Instead, they nicked Rooster’s name, logo, and signage. Pollo loco.

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

Sometimes the work we do takes a long time to gestate. Way back in 2006 TOKY worked with St. Louis’ Regional Housing and Community Development Alliance to help rebrand an area of Old North St. Louis that was ready to come back to life. We advised the RHCDA to use as the cornerstone of the brand the one asset they had in the area with high public recognition… Crown Candy Kitchen. In St. Louis, everybody knows Crown Candy. Heck, even that “Man Vs. Food” guy knows Crown Candy (and its bathrooms).

We used Crown Candy’s high consumer recognition to build the entire neighborhood brand, and Crown Village was born. This was an area where urban pioneers could buy homes for ridiculously low prices, literally minutes from downtown. Our positioning theme hammered that point home, taking a subtle swipe at the hyper-inflated prices of Washington Avenue’s tony lofts: “Great City Living, Without the Lofty Price.” The logo was made up of letterforms from the old commercial signs in the old 14th Street Mall.

Yesterday at a ceremony attended by lots of the City’s muckety-mucks, Crown Village debuted “Crown Square”  which is (according the RHCDA site) “the most significant redevelopment to take place in the Old North Saint Louis historic neighborhood in many decades.  This ambitious undertaking includes the historic rehabilitation of 27 buildings into 80 mixed-income apartments, townhouses, lofts and live-work spaces and 34,000 square feet of street level commercial space, with an array of ‘green building’ features built into the development.  It includes the removal of the two-block long ‘pedestrian mall,’ tying the neighborhood back together with new streets, sidewalks, lighting, parking and other public amenities.”

Congrats to RHCDA and Old North. It’s been a long time coming!