George Lois

George Lois
George Loisis an American art director, designer, and author. Lois is perhaps best known for over 92 covers he designed for Esquire magazine from 1962 to 1972. In 2008, The Museum of Modern Art exhibited 32 of Lois' Esquire covers...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionArtist
Date of Birth26 June 1931
CountryUnited States of America
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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.'
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In professional work - certainly in the arts and graphics - 99% of people have zero courage. They blow with the wind.
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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.
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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.
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All the people who run agencies, all the important people in agencies have taken communication courses, marketing courses, advertising courses, and courses basically teach advertising as a science, and advertising is so far from a science it isn't even funny. Advertising is an art.
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Advertising, an art, is constantly besieged and compromised by logicians and technocrats, the scientists of our profession who wildly miss the main point about everything we do…
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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.
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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.
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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!
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.