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The Great Gatsby
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The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

George Lois Quotes

When you create advertising, always start with the words.

– George Lois

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

– George Lois

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.

– George Lois

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

– George Lois

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.’

– George Lois

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

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

– George Lois

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

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.

– George Lois

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.

– George Lois

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

– George Lois

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.

– George Lois

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

– George Lois

There’s no such thing as a cautious creative.

– George Lois

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

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

– George Lois

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.

– George Lois

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.

– George Lois

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

– George Lois

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

– George Lois

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

The computer has played a role in destroying creativity with the Photoshop. Everybody thinks they’re a designer.

– George Lois

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

– George Lois

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

– George Lois

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.

– George Lois

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.

– George Lois