Better looking than Jon Hamm? George Lois, 1964
“The legendary George Lois is the most creative, prolific advertising communicator of our time.” That’s what it says on George Lois’s own website. It goes on: “Running his own ad agencies, he is renowned for dozens of marketing miracles that triggered innovative and populist changes in American (and world) culture.”
Nobody has ever accused Lois of being immodest; in fact, he’s more than once been accused of hogging all the kudos for ideas that weren’t his alone. The thing is, most of what Lois’s bio credits him with is probably true. There were his groundbreaking, controversial covers for Esquire in the 1960s, which reflected as powerfully as anything else the tectonic cultural and political shifts happening in America. There was his “I Want My MTV” campaign; his launch of the Tommy Hilfiger clothing label; the rebranding of ESPN. He’s a creative force of nature whose work has been likened to a punch in the mouth. And for better or worse his fingerprints are all over our popular culture.
If you saw the documentary Art & Copy about creatives in the advertising business, you’ll remember Lois as the loudmouth guy with the Bronx accent that you wished had a lot more screen time. So when we learned Lois was going to be in Toronto to address the Association of Registered Graphic Designers’ 12th annual DesignThinkers Conference we figured we had to be there. Here are some of our favourite Loisisms from yesterday.
Lois on Design Thinking
“To tell you the truth, I am not sure what design even means. Personally I have never regarded myself as a designer, I am a graphic communicator, because I create big ideas, not designs.”
“Design thinking should be about getting an idea. Design is playing with yourself, you know what I mean.”
“Understand this: if there is no meaning to your work, there is no meaning to your life. Art directors, advertisers, magazine designers, all graphic designers must be communicators. Or they are simply rearrangers of elements in layout or design.”
“Be warned the capability of a computer, to create bells and whistles can never inspire the conception of a big idea.”
“I see our role as graphic communicators as precisely of that of revolutionary art. But our kind of art has nothing to do with putting images on canvas; our art concern should be, must be, with creating images that penetrate people’s minds, warm their hearts and cause them to act.”
“In a profession that should have no rules, I have three commandments: One… reject group grope. You understand what group grope is? It is people bullshitting together. Two… reject analysis paralysis. Know what that is? More people bullshitting together. And three… To truly produce a masterful work, reject con, create icon.”
“That’s called making marketing miracles—when something is dead in the water and you can change the culture with advertising—that is what it’s all about. That is what the thrill of being a designer is all about.”
Lois on the Tommy Hilfiger campaign that launched the clothing designer’s career.
“My wife and I were sitting at Mr. Chow’s having dinner in New York with friends of ours and Calvin Klein comes over to me. He sticks his finger in my face and says, “Do you know it took me 20 years to get where Tommy [Hilfiger] is today.” And I grabbed his finger and said, “Schmuck, why do it in 20 years when you could do it in 20 days.”
Lois on his Esquire covers, specifically Sonny Liston in a Santa Hat and Andy Warhol drowning in Campbell’s soup can.
“This was one of the first ones I did. Sonny Liston had just become champion. I showed the cover to Cassius Clay before he became Muhammad Ali and he looked at it and said, ‘George, that is the last black motherfucker that anyone in America would want to see come down their chimney.’ And he was right…. I shoved Liston wearing a Santa Claus hat in white America’s face and just scared the shit out of them. Everyone understood what I was saying, I was saying, ‘You’re all full of shit.’”
“I said, ‘Andy, I want to put you on a cover of Esquire.’ He said, ‘George I know you… what’s the idea.’ I said, ‘Well I am going to have you drowning in a giant can of Campbell’s soup.’ He said, ‘Oh, I love it. But wait a minute George… won’t you have to build a gigantic can?’ I said, ‘No, schmuck.’ Remember this was before computers. ‘No, I take a picture of a can, I take a picture of you,” I said. His response, ‘Oh, how clever.’ It’s a funny cover, but I had him drowning in his own celebrity… and he wound up being killed because of it.”
Lois on the Mad Men Series
“The news of the Mad Men series was exhilarating to all of us who played prominent roles in that watershed event [that was advertising in the ‘60s], but I wondered, how could they do the period justice without contacting me, the original Mad Man, to input, to consult, or whatever. Then out of the blue a Mad Men producer called me and told me they were tracking down some real mad men to film some promos for the show, and every other time they contacted someone they’d blurt out, ‘you got to get George Lois, he was the cat that dominated the ‘60s’ ‘Whoa,’ I said. You mean that you guys are doing a TV series based on advertising in the ‘60s and you’ve never heard of me. ‘No, no,’ he protested, ‘We know who you are.’ ‘Bullshit,’ I said.
‘If you really want to know what happened in [advertising in ] the ‘60s you should read my autobiographical book, George Be Careful: A Greek Florist’s Kid in the Roughhouse World of Advertising. It is a blow-by-blow account of how I triggered the creative-fucking-revolution that changed the world,’ I said, and hung up. The stunt producer called back a week later and said, “Wow, we could have done a TV show just based on your book. That scene where you hung out the window and threatened to jump if the client didn’t buy your Mottza poster was hilarious.’ I told him to kiss my Greek ass and hung up.”
“Mad Men misrepresents the advertising industry by ignoring the dynamics and the creative revolution that changed the world of communications forever. In creating a popular TV show based around an ad agency the producers went whole hog to depict the scum of the industry, rather than the up-beat world of culture-busting creativity. Mad Men has given the world the perception that the scatology of the Sterling Cooper workplace was industry wide. The maddening show is nothing more than a soap opera placed in a series and a setting of a glamorous office where stylish fools hump their secretaries, suck up martinis, and smoke themselves to death as they produce dumb, lifeless advertising, oblivious to the aspiring civil rights movement, the barging women’s movement, the evil Vietnam war and other seismic changes throughout the turbulent roller coaster 1960s that altered America forever. The more I think about Mad Men the more I take insult, so fuck you Mad Men. You phony, grey flannel suit, male chauvinist, no-talent, WASP, white-shirted, racist, anti-semitic, Republican sons-of-bitches. Besides, when I was in my thirties I was better looking than Jon Hamm.”
