Mike Krukar wishes he were Don Draper, the brilliant creative director in Mad Men.

There he was, on New Year’s Day at 4 a.m. slightly drunk and dozing in and out, giant billboards whizzing by, as he and his brother cruised along the Gardiner Expressway westbound.

All he could think about to get his mind off impending new media project deadlines were scenes from the show.

His job was to develop an interactive iPhone app for the fourth-year META art show, and so far he had come up with some decent concepts, but nothing too stellar. And that’s when Krukar had an epiphany.

“Don Draper — he always knows how to take an idea to the next level,” Krukar says. “I just thought, ‘The app itself is OK. But what can we do to make it even better?’”

He would start by making a comprehensive application for the April 8 exhibit that would not only show viewers around the Distillery District gallery, like an audio-guide for the smartphone age, but also provide useful background info about artists and access to a

direct Twitter feed about the exhibit.

Later he would would use the initial app as the starting point from which to develop a program with greater capacity to link disparate artists across Toronto.

He immediately became protective of his idea, and decided not to tell anyone right away.

“I definitely didn’t want anyone stealing it,” he says. “I kinda kept it to myself until I talked to my professor.”

When the time came to ptich the idea to his prof, he channelled his idol Draper.

“I definitely went in thinking of him.”