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in NYC and it makes the front cover of the New York Post. Our strategy is that none of our output is for sale, NFS. Hipness has no commercial value, Infiltration does.

Gelman: It’s more of a George Lois way of doing advertising. He would come up with a catchy phrase that would be immediately picked up by Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show. And repeated a few times after that.

Steven: Yes, I have a similar history. I’ve created S&M parties, sponsored by Mont Blanc and the invite made it to the cover of the Wall Street Journal as editorial. When the cover of the WSJ features an invite that only 200 copies exist and the focus is sadomasochism, this is infiltration of the culture.

Gelman: How do you do that?

Steven: Again, it has to do with, you make the object, knowing its power of subversive intent and its maturity factor. I work with clients who are positioned globally through their PR firms to capture that level of media attention. But you also create and deliver a provocation powerful enough and subversive enough, that’s actually going to exploit of our advantage of having one-to-one access with the people who decide what’s in the media on a global level. In 1995 I titled this phenomenon The Architecture of Influence.

Gelman: So basically you’re saying that you need to know-

Steven: You can bypass it, but I’ve been very fortunate in the past. It goes back to the late 70’s, and who I’ve worked with and the projects I’ve worked on. There are just these handfuls, it literally is just a handful, when you’re based in New York, and you are known by this handful- they’re gatekeepers. They are like characters in Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings. It’s a mythic scenario. Basically, I can view myself as part of these campaigns, like I’m one of the main characters in Dungeons & Dragons. I’m at the beginning of the game. I know there’s going to be adversaries along the path. This is the adventure. I’ve done this so many times, like a samurai. We know when we go to the movies today, it’s hard for Hollywood to come up with a new alien type that will actually frighten us anymore. They’ve co-opted it so many times, and we’ve all seen it so many times. Well, I’m just a very knowledgeable game master. LONE panther has access to a level of media that is profound. We put in "hot buttons" that are there to infiltrate global media. And if you’re not aware, it seems like a natural part of the creative process. If you are aware, they just light up, metaphorically. Then those 500 people who control the media, exclaim, "oh, the door’s been opened for us VIP’s", then they walk in the influence door. The graphics are put together, the copy is put together, and the artwork is positioned for them. It’s a VIP room within the solution. [laughs] Of the one million people who have access to this commercial-creative experience, only 500 see the VIP part, but they’re the ones who bring it to the attention of the world media. That’s how we infiltrate at that level. Increasingly, some of the clients are getting clever. They’re getting to really know how it works. They don’t completely know how it works, they don’t question how it works, but they believe now. Where two years ago, if you presented this to them, they’d go, "I don’t know what you’re trying to do here."

Gelman: Do you manage to get paid a fee equivalent of the value you provide?

Steven: Of what it’s worth? No, unfortunately not. I read in a back issue of Emigre an article by Milton Glaser. He mentions that the digital culture has completely taken the mystery out of the profession and de-valued what we do. Except for a couple of the advertising guys, who also have to be executives, that’s why they call them Executive Creative Directors, no one’s getting paid what they should.

Michael: I think we’re a special case. For small design firms and independent designers it’s really hard to make any money at all. I think there’s too much competition, everyone’s trying to under-bid each other, and interactive is completely under-valued at the moment. Partly because of reactionary attitudes after the whole dot-com fall.

Steven: People lost a lot of money! It’s that simple.

Michael: Also, it's partly because a big portion of the work one puts onto the web is code or animation and you can't really see it. It’s out there but no one except the experts really knows how much time it consumes. The web gets really really under-valued and currently it just seems generally not worth to for us.

Steven: In the last two years, things have gotten very interesting and very complex. Prior to that, up until 2000 and into 2001, I had reached a point where I wouldn’t work for less than $2000 dollars a day. I’m not interested in deals or partnerships, or any of that stuff, because the design community is not set up that way. No one ever takes you seriously if you mention a piece of the action as part of your fee. I was just trying to get my $10,000 a week. That is a spectacular amount of money. It’s over half a million a year. I have no office, I have no overhead, I have no employees, so if you’re valued at $10,000 a week, and you have nothing to spend it on, it’s a good week’s work. Then things unraveled. I respect Michael’s time, though he’s 20 years younger. He has put in all the time and has all the requisite skills, so he’s valued at $1500 a day. The two of us are $3,500 a day, which is $17,500 a week. Usually the client says X amount, probably about 25% of the real value of the service we are contributing to their business. Which we then translate into the amount of time we will spend on the solution. We value ourselves. We don’t let the client devalue us or our work.

Gelman: How many projects are you-

Steven: How many do we have out there right now? We have James, a national hotel start-up. Additionally we’re the creative team for the Pomeranc family, founders of the Thompson Hotels Group, which includes 60 Thompson in New York City and The Sagamore in Miami Beach. The group keeps expanding with new properties, so that’s an ongoing process. We are working on an exhibition titled PROMO to be held at the Roth Horowitz Gallery in spring 2004, we are developing new brands for our Swiss based division and a new global hotel strategy.

Gelman: Do you think that’s enough?

Steven: Yeah, I think that’s good. You got enough.

After reviewing this text, we would like to close with the following thought.

LONE panther is moving away from an interest and involvement with the urban and the suburban. Our focus is the nomadic. Our role models are the pioneers of surfing. There is something compelling and meaningful by directly experiencing reality as an ocean. We are attempting a humanistic experiment to see if creativity can evolve when you eliminate the need for production. Our ultimate goal at LONE panther is to be blissfully unproductive. This statement is best understood as a poetic metaphor.

I personally would like to thank all the people that misunderstood me; they have made me more cunning. SMK