CONCEPT | ART DIRECTION

Bolt.com was a social networking site for teens we launched in 1997, a good while before the general marketing public understood the prospects created by the Echo Boom/Generation Y and the internet. We needed an attention-getting media kit, and decided the best way to get the message across to the 20- and 30- something media planners was to reference their own teen years. We layed everything out on ruled notebook paper with colored tabbed dividers, included a pencil pouch and ruler, and fastened it all into an old-school blue canvas 3-ring binder. Then we would leave the binders in our conference rooms at the office, and encourage doodling on them in every meeting. When sufficiently filled with "Wyld Stallynz Rules!" and "I [heart] Brad" we would send them out to potential advertisers.

We won "Best in Category" for Packaging in ID Magazine's Annual Design Review for this kit, tying with Chip Kidd for the Naked book cover. The 3 of us who worked on it were young and quite ecstatic about this, and it was an amusing learning experience all on its own. First we were told we had just gotten an honorable mention, and then we heard it was upgraded to Best in Category a week later; apparently the judges violently disagreed about us (note that one said "It's uncomfortable and stupid, like dimestore art," but I'm sure he meant it in a good way!). Thrilled and naive, we got all dressed up to go to the opening party at Moss on Greene Street in Soho, where all the winning pieces across all categories would be displayed, and where we hoped to meet some of our design heroes. Imagine our shock when we looked all over for our kit and it wasn't there, not *anywhere*. We found an ex-Bolt intern now working for ID who explained to us that "Murray hated it." Murray who? Murray Moss, it turns out, refused to let it in his store. I haven't set foot in there since and never will, no matter how many friends create wedding registries in that evil place.

On a last funny note to this really long story, Dan Pelson, Bolt's CEO, was so pissed upon hearing this later that evening that he went back over to Moss and tracked Murray down to confront him about it, and Murray was so frightened that he ran and hid in a broom closet in the middle of the party until his security guard came and escorted Dan out. My hero. ;)