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" I talk to all the creative directors today, and they take me aside, and they say, 'You know, it must have been great back in those days when you could do anything you wanted.' I say, 'Huh? Excuse me?' I mean, we fought. In the '60s and '70s, you fought wars with clients, and you have to continue fighting wars to do great work. "

George Lois

Work

Today

Great

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" It's almost as if creativity is dead. The visual power of advertising was everywhere - now it's basically gone. "

" You can't test great advertising. You can only test the mediocre. Not that I don't care about demographics. You have to understand who you're going after. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" In professional work - certainly in the arts and graphics - 99% of people have zero courage. They blow with the wind. "

" 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.' "

" 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. "

" If you work with convictions, people have got to listen to you. "

" I've done truth to power all my life. It's got me into trouble, but who cares? "

" I may have destroyed world culture, but MTV wouldn't exist today if it wasn't for me. "

George Lois

Culture

May

" I look in the mirror, and I work with the brightest person I know. "

" When you think of a brand, you should immediately understand it from the advertising attitude, from the words and visuals. "

" Museums are custodians of epiphanies, and these epiphanies enter the central nervous system and deep recesses of the mind. "

" My concern has always been with creating images that catch people's eyes, penetrate their minds, warm their hearts and cause them to act. "

" 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. "

" The whole area of creativity is constipated and frightened. "

" 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. "

George Lois

Problem

Solution

" When I teach classes at the School of Visual Arts,, I'll ask the students, 'How many of you have been to a museum this year?' Nobody raises their hand and I go into a tirade. If you want to do something sharp and innovative, you have to know what went on before. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" There's no such thing as a cautious creative. "

" 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. "

" The 1960s was a heroic age in the history of the art of communication - the audacious movers and shakers of those times bear no resemblance to the cast of characters in 'Mad Men.' "

" If somebody says to you, 'MTV,' you think of Mick Jagger on a phone screaming at that phone: 'I want my MTV.' That, to me, was always the epitome of great advertising. "

George Lois

Advertising

Think

" 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. "

" The producers of 'Mad Men,' you know, think I hate their show, which is true. "

" Great advertising, in and of itself, becomes a benefit of the product. "

" Because advertising and marketing is an art, the solution to each new problem or challenge should begin with a blank canvas and an open mind, not with the nervous borrowings of other people's mediocrities. That's precisely what 'trends' are - a search for something 'safe' - and why a reliance on them leads to oblivion. "

" 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. "

" A truly great magazine cover surprises, even shocks, and connects in a nano-second. "