Feast Your Eyes On Feast

The magazine is really gorgeous. I picked it up recently from Pi in Kirkwood and it's a great format. I thought the articles were great, going beyond just restaurants, but also focused on cooking at home. As a local "foodie" here, I really appreciated that content. The design and format was also really strong and made it an easier read that Sauce on many levels. Props to TOKY on that...

...but then I saw this post about the Feast STL website from TOKY's blog and was really bummed...

Check it out:
TOKY designs FEAST’s site: the Devil is in the details

I've never seen a design firm, especially as prestigious as TOKY, go to so many lengths to call out the inconsistencies and issues with their development partner. To me, the "details" is working with them on the layout, CSS, and design issues they they point out. I do get it... it doesn't look like to proposed comps, but that's the very nature of interactive design. If you understand the constraints of your content management system, you then know how to design the best solution. Maybe there's still time to make adjustments to the front-end design... maybe utilize Cufon or Typekit to get the typography right, or examine ways to modify the CSS so there's a happy medium.

I've worked with many development teams and contractors and you're right, sometimes things don't turn out exactly as you proposed... but to post a comparison to all the mishaps in the design doesn't help your case, it draw attention to discrepancies that no one would have noticed. You could have fixed it in a month or post-launch.

I don't know the whole story, and I'm sure someone will point it out to me. But stating a portion of your client work is "more famine than FEAST" feels petty... and would get the agency/firm fired from future work. What happened?

I hope you guys figure out a way to get the style and layout to where you want it... I'm such a fan of everything you do. That blog post hits below the belt and puts TOKY in a bad light.

Hafiz, I couldn't agree more.

TOKY does great work. They are hard core on their design. I understand they were trying to show their design intentions, but to me it communicated the opposite. It said "We don't know how to design for the web" which is not the case. Their web work is great most of the time.

This has happened to anyone in the creative profession. You have "the perfect creative concept/script/design" that in a perfect world would be what goes out. But perfect is quite subjective. If everyone who has ever had their original idea edited by a client, or tweaked based on the medium, went on to trash the end product like this, the web would be full of unemployed creatives with an opinion on client work.

All I've ever heard is the highest praise for TOKY, but clearly their reputation is an overstatement at best. It is both disrespectful to your client, and in poor taste in the professional community to bash your development team and point out every place your design was "perfect" and they messed it up. "Just so you know, THIS is how it was SUPPOSED to look." Guys, pointing out the "flaws" only makes YOU look bad. Your inability to design within the constraints of the CMS, or work in a professional manner with your development team only shows your inflexibility and made you look unprofessional and petty.

What would have been an otherwise successful launch of this new publication is now muddied by making this about TOKY's vanity, and not about the awesome content of the piece. Bad form.

Just read Toky's post. Wow. I thought I was an asshole.

Guys, read our post again. We go out of our way to caveat the development team's work:

"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."

I don't think we're "bashing" the development team, but we are expressing our disappointment at the details they overlooked. It's good, not great. That's bashing?

Hafiz, you said "If you understand the constraints of your content management system, you then know how to design the best solution." We totally agree. So we did meet with the dev team up front, and we do understand this CMS's capabilities and limitations. This is not about the CMS. The dev team scrutinized our comps before PSD turnover, and told us we had a 100% green light. But after turnover we didn't hear anything back -- ever -- despite our asking for beta reviews. The site went live without our help to correct mistakes they overlooked in the rush to go live.

We've worked extensively with Typekit, and have blogged about the challenges. It was not an option here. And, no, I simply don't buy into the fact that no one notices these kinds of mistakes, or that these errors are just what happens to good design online.

In retrospect, the "more famine than feast" zinger seems too clever by half. I take responsibility for that line, so hate me and not Kirsten. I was pissed off and frustrated by the project when I wrote it, and that's never a good policy. I apologize for my flippancy. Lesson learned; I'll cool down before blogging in the future, and I know you guys will call me on it if I don't.

Like most designers, we TOKY folk are nit-picking perfectionists who worry and fret over both the details and the big picture. We try very deliberately to hit the job over the fence every time up at bat. But once it's down on paper or in pixels, we are passionate and fiercely protective of our creative product. We don't enter into partnerships casually, and we invest our side of the deal with all the energy and talents we can bring to bear. We simply expect our partners — developers, printers, photographers, whatever — to take the work and the partnership as seriously as we do.

Even after your comments, I do think it's time St. Louis designers demand that the developers in town treat design with the same respect that good printers and photographers do. And that's something that's not happening nearly often enough.

One more pissed off post and then I'll stop. Really.

StLWriter, a question. What's the difference between an author and a hack? Anonymity. Authors sign their work, they get the by-line, they take responsibility for what they say.

I know I'm ultimately responsible for everything about TOKY, from our creative product to our customer service, from our finances to our reputation. If people don't like what I say or do on behalf of the studio or our work — well, at least you know who's responsible.

That's authorship. It's how professionals act. It's how grown-ups act. Posting anonymously is like scrawling "TOKY SUX" on a bathroom stall.

If you want to trash talk me or my studio, sign your name. If not, take your crayons and go somewhere else. This is a site for grown-ups.

— Eric Thoelke
Phone: 314-534-2000 ext. 133
eric@toky.com

And trash talking your clients on your own website is okay? Seems like you should have thought a little longer before publicly posting your rant. Discounting someone's comments about work and ranting commentary that you put out for public view because they post anonymously? Did it piss you off that you don't have someone specific to slam this time like you do your clients, or that what they said rang true?

"I do think it's time St. Louis designers demand that the developers in town treat design with the same respect that good printers and photographers do."

What about treating clients with respect and working things out privately, and not the same week as the launch? Your blog post could have been presented with other work as a later case study on development issues. But YOU chose to make it about this project, this client, on your own pissed-off timeline. This could have been handled with grace, but wasn't. You get what you give.

I just hope FEAST can find another firm that respects the importance of a launch enough to keep their dirty laundry to themselves.

Whoa whoa whoa people... there is some passionate commenting going on in this post! Let's let everyone calm down here a moment and slow the row on those antsy fingers pecking furiously at the keyboard.

Let's at it like this:

Toky is confident/borderline cocky. We all know this from their interview way back in the egotist infancy. Is this bad? Not really for it propels them to maintain a level of visual excellence that is not met across the board by every other firm in St. Louis (although some do).

On one hand we see what they're saying and love the transparency they are displaying with the work process - it's incredibly interesting and you cannot begin to blame Toky for maintaing the level of quality they deem important to their product. On the other, there could obviously be a more tasteful airing of grievances which Eric himself has already admitted and willing to be held accountable by his peers in the future...

That doesn't seem aggressively arrogant to us.

Props to Hafiz for further covering the original post and questioning intentions. Props to Eric for being honest, spelling out this project's specific pitfalls and admitting fault for harsh comments. Props to Mark Phillip for being verified and not scrawling in crayons.

Would like developers in the area to answer the call to Thoelke's finishing words above and submit some truly beautifully developed work....

"Would like developers in the area to answer the call to Thoelke's finishing words above and submit some truly beautifully developed work...."

Thank You Egotist!!!! Me too!!!!

This is a little off topic but, today is a big day at TOKY; we're celebrating the 10th anniversary of our interactive creative director and a dear friend, colleague and inspiration of mine personally. In light of this conversation about our post, I'm reflecting on my path in design which has been solidly grounded in the interactive field for the past 10 years.

I moved here 5 years ago from the west coast, previous to that I was on the east coast, all the time working with a wide variety of clients, designers, developers and design studios.

When I first started working in the interactive field in St Louis (at TOKY), something that was very apparent to me about the culture of the design community here was the print-centric mentality. It has been evolving over the past 5 years, but there is still an underlying feeling that excellence in design for the interactive medium takes a back seat in the minds of designers and clients alike.

Achieving the best possible results in an end product for the client is our responsibility as designers AND developers. A designer's opinion about the "best possible result" often differs from the developer's. This is where the breakdown happens — developers and designers stop listening and/or talking to each other, and the end product ends up suffering. OR the relationship is structured in such a way that prohibits open and ongoing communication between the design and development teams.

We ALL have the opportunity and responsibility of educating our clients about the communication and partnership that is necessary to produce GREAT interactive, in an effort to come full circle to a renaissance where art and science can play happily together.

Here's the root of the problem: "hand over our Photoshop files".

Photoshop is for coming up with the initial idea of what the site will look like.

Your finished design is HTML and CSS, and *that* is what you hand over to the developers.

And then when they're done, you go back over it and you, the designer, adjust the CSS if necessary.

If you want the best results, that's the only way to get them for web work. And if that means you need more in-house web design talent, then you need to hire for that.

I think some of you are missing the point. The website is called "St. Louis Egoist". Not The Compassionate Designers Forum.

Ego –noun, plural e·gos.
1.
the “I” or self of any person; a person as thinking, feeling, and willing, and distinguishing itself from the selves of others and from objects of its thought.
2.
Psychoanalysis . the part of the psychic apparatus that experiences and reacts to the outside world and thus mediates between the primitive drives of the id and the demands of the social and physical environment.
3.
egotism; conceit; self-importance: Her ego becomes more unbearable each day.
4.
self-esteem or self-image; feelings: Your criticism wounded his ego.

I'm glad Eric Thoelke has the balls to call someone out when they poop all over the design that he and TOKY worked on. Maybe expressing his opinions in an open public forum wasn't the best way of dealing with it. But, oh well, at least you know where he stands. Maybe he's just showing his "vanity" or just being an "asshole".

Here's a different perspective. I'm a carpenter. I do home rehabs and build custom furniture, most of which I couldn't afford to put in my own house. Let's just say for example you hire an architect to design a house for you. Then you hire me to build said house, and when I'm finished, all of the windows are in the wrong places and the door knobs are all at knee level. You'd be furious. You'd be even more furious when my response to your anger was, "well all of the doors and windows open so I don't see what the problem is". It's called being half-assed.

I would venture to say that most people that read this blog or forum or whatever the hell the St. Louis Egoist is, is some type of designer, artist, photographer etc. We're all snobs. We know what we like and we know what sucks. When someone poops all over your work and then gives some B.S. excuse as to why they spread fecal matter all over it, it tends to make us angry. But, judging by some of the responses above nobody will have the balls to say anything about it.

@ J. Jeffryes --- Agreed. This is our preference. And we do have the in-house talent.

Some clients already have the development lined up to be done elsewhere, and our hands are tied. Then it becomes more of a communication issue.

Hey, just wanted to say thanks to Eric and Kirsten for providing the other half of the story. I've been in that same spot when the initial design and art direction was established for a site, and then locked out of the final steps to make sure it's implemented correctly. And true, I too try to demand quality work with every development team I've worked with... it's a challenge due to numerous variables... time and budget mostly. But with every new project and client, things seem to move in the right direction.

In the end, the tone, flippancy, and approach to that post set me off... It's not like the interactive process is new at TOKY in any way because we continue to see such stellar work that acts as an inspiration to our local creative community. Thanks for letting us peek into your process and eagerly await to see your next endeavor.

Glad everyone could come to an amicable resolve on this topic as it seems that mention of either Toky or Sang Han will bring the commenters out in hoards.

Also, we are probably the only EgoTist that has custom woodworkers signing up and we think that is awesome; especially ones that are opinionated and think that we should remain heavily opinionated.

@Kirsten: you can always fix the CSS and send it to them. :)

Even if someone else is doing the development, in my experience if you send static HTML and CSS that looks exactly right you get better results than PSDs, because the developers can build their code to generate the same code. If nothing else, the developers respect you more, where sometimes they're dismissive of flat graphics.

I love burgers on covers:
http://stlmagblogs.typepad.com/.a/6a00e5547477bc8833011570b94f11970b-pi

hey anonymous

me too!

http://doppelgangerdesign.blogspot.com/2010/06/burger-war-ny-mag-st-loui...