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" 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. "

George Lois

Advertising

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

" 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. "

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

George Lois

Culture

May

" 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're working, and you're not trying to be great, give up. "

" 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. "

" 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.' "

" Nothing great can come of more than three people in a room. If you had 10 incredibly bright people, nothing would come out of it. "

George Lois

People

Great

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

" 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. "

" 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! "

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" When I lecture kids, I say, 'You've got to be ambitious by the advertising' - ambitious. You've got to say, 'See, this product? Maybe I can change the world with this product.' They look at me like I'm nuts, but that's what you can do. "

" From the time I was three or four years old, I drew all the time. Drew all the time, every second. "

" 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. "

George Lois

Respect

Kid

" These days, no celebrity on a magazine cover, including Brad Pitt, Oprah Winfrey, Julia Roberts, or Leonardo DiCaprio, could possibly match the visual punch of Alfred E. Neuman, the gap-toothed, grinning boy, goofily peeking out at us on the newsstand. "

George Lois

Boy

Celebrity

" 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

" When you create advertising, always start with the words. "

" 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. "

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

" What Apple did for technology is brilliant, but they didn't do nothin' for our economy. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" People say I'm the original Don Draper. I'm not Don Draper. "

" 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. "

" 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.' "

" 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. "