Words matter. These are the best George Lois Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
With the way I worked, a client can give me everything they know about something, and then I go away and come back with advertising that knocks them out of their chair. They finally understand what kind of a company they are.
The producers of ‘Mad Men,’ you know, think I hate their show, which is true.
My concern has always been with creating images that catch people’s eyes, penetrate their minds, warm their hearts and cause them to act.
Museums are custodians of epiphanies, and these epiphanies enter the central nervous system and deep recesses of the mind.
Doyle Dane Bernbach was a great, great agency when I got there. There was an arrogance that everyone had, but it was a closed club. I was a guy who worked a little differently. Edgier. More punch-in-the-mouth.
I may have destroyed world culture, but MTV wouldn’t exist today if it wasn’t for me.
Trends can tyrannize; trends are traps. In any creative industry, the fact that others are moving in a certain direction is always proof positive, at least to me, that a new direction is the only direction.
In professional work – certainly in the arts and graphics – 99% of people have zero courage. They blow with the wind.
The creative act, the defeat of habit by originality, overcomes everything. And I really believe that. And what I try to teach young people, or anybody in any creative field, is that every idea should seemingly be outrageous.
When I did ‘Esquire,’ I did a lot of celebrity covers, but the celebrity cover was Hubert Humphrey as a dummy, sitting on Lyndon Johnson’s lap and aping his feelings about the war. I did celebrity covers that made a difference in what was going on in American culture.
Sometimes all the ‘marketing’ insight in the world can’t move a client, but the creation of a truly great brand name can become a billion-dollar idea!
Whatever the creative industry, when you’re confronted with the challenge of coming up with a Big Idea, always work with the most talented, innovative mind available. Hopefully… that’s you.
There’s no such thing as a cautious creative.
If you think people are dumb, you’ll spend a lifetime doing dumb work.
I don’t design. I get what I think is a big idea, and I put the idea down. I’m not a designer. I’m a communicator.
A graphic designer, you know, who understands ideas and understands that ideas are what makes the world go round, could change the world with a magazine. If one talent could do it right now, and everybody would stop saying it’s the death of magazines.
What I taught myself was that in any problem you get, you’ve got to come up with an innovative, brilliant, kind of unusual, stunning solution.
If you’re working, and you’re not trying to be great, give up.
Everybody is so busy talking about ‘Twittering’ and talking about the new technologies and talking about this and that, but they don’t talk about creativity.
Nobody should force you to do a bad piece of work in your whole life – no client, no creative director, nobody. The job isn’t to please the client; the job is to produce something for the client that makes them incredibly successful.
I’m sounding like an old fart talking about how bad advertising is today, but it’s true. Advertising sucks. Guys like me and Bob Gage and certainly Bill Bernbach and two or three other guys, we exemplified and led the creative revolution.
I had a fistfight with every kid on my block. I got about fifteen broken noses to prove it. Part of it was also because I was always drawing, and I always had an artist portfolio with me. But I was a tough kid. I won their respect.
The computer has played a role in destroying creativity with the Photoshop. Everybody thinks they’re a designer.
I’ve done truth to power all my life. It’s got me into trouble, but who cares?
You don’t create a magazine for your readers. You don’t take a poll, you know, like the politicians do, and find out what they’re thinking and what they want… You’re supposed to be telling people what the hell you think is exciting and dynamic and thought-provoking, and do it – and do it your way.
Look at the news stand, you know? I mean, it’s a cacophony of famous people or people who want to be famous with blurbs all around it, and it’s supposed to be, you know, that’s supposed to be creativity in journalism. My God, it’s unbelievable. It’s shocking.
To me, great advertising can make food taste better, can make your car run smoother. It can change your perception of something. Is it wrong to change your perception about something? Of course not. I’m not lying; I’m just saying, ‘This one’s more fun, this one’s more exciting.’
Great advertising, in and of itself, becomes a benefit of the product.
The whole area of creativity is constipated and frightened.
If you work with convictions, people have got to listen to you.
