Quotes from 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

The whole area of creativity is constipated and frightened.

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.

Follow your bliss. That which you love you must spend your life doing, as passionately and as perfectly as your heart, mind and instincts allow.

Ad agencies do all kinds of market research that ask people what they think they want, and instead, you should be creating things that you want. If you do something and you get it, the rest of the world will get it, too. Trust your own instincts, your own intellect, and your own sense of humor.

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!

When I did 'Esquire,' I did a lot of celebrity covers, but the celebrity cover was Hubert Humphrey as a dummy, sitting on Lyndon Johnson's lap and aping his feelings about the war. I did celebrity covers that made a difference in what was going on in American culture.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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