George Lois

Artist

1931-06-26

Quotes by George Lois

• Only with absolute fearlessness can we slay the dragons of mediocrity that invade our gardens.

  Read quote

• If a man does not work passionately - even furiously - at being the best in the world at what he does, he fails his talent, his destiny, and his God.

  Read quote

• If a man does not work passionately - even furiously - at being the best in the world at what he does, he fails his talent, his destiny, and his God.

  Read quote

• Only with absolute fearlessness can we slay the dragons of mediocrity that invade our gardens.

  Read quote

• 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.

  Read quote

• 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.

  Read quote

• 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.

  Read quote

• 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.

  Read quote

• Truly great images make all the other millions of images you look at unimportant. You gotta look at an image and understand it in a nanosecond.

  Read quote

• 'Mad Men' is nothing more than the fulfillment of every possible stereotype of the early 1960s bundled up nicely to convince consumers that the sort of morally repugnant behavior exhibited by its characters - with one-night-stands and excessive consumption of Cutty Sark and Lucky Strikes - is glamorous and 'vintage.'

  Read quote

• 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.

  Read quote

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

  Read quote

• 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.

  Read quote

• Creativity can solve almost any problem. The creative act, the defeat of habit by originality, overcomes everything.

  Read quote