The most thrilling thing as a designer is making something that becomes a cultural phenomenon and impacts people.<br /><br />Question: What's the most satisfying part of <br />creating a great design?George Lois: So when you say <br />what excites me most in advertising here was when I took something and <br />made it, made it a giant part of the culture. And that was the most <br />thrilling, you know? Of the things I worked on and I've done a couple <br />of dozen like that. The Esquire covers, when I was most excited about <br />was, you know, was the anti-war stuff, you know? Stuff that woke up <br />America, helped wake up America. And woke up people to the greatness of <br /> Mohammad Ali. Because when I did that cover of Mohammad Ali at St. <br />Sebastian, he was, he was, I mean, if there was a poll on it, 80% of the <br /> country, white and black, were against him. And that cover, in and of <br />itself, helped change America's attitude about the war, and directly, <br />directly helped change Martin Luther King from saying, all of a sudden, <br />you know, all his, all the black leaders, that he would keep out of <br />talking against the Vietnam War because he didn't want to piss off <br />Johnson—because Johnson was a, you know, a real pioneer in helping forge <br /> civil rights laws. But the second he came out against, defending <br />Muhammad Ali and against the war, he was in deep shit with Johnson.So, <br /> I mean, I'm proud of a lot of things I've done that helped change the <br />culture. You know, I mean, that's the stuff that you really remember. Question: <br /> If you were a young designer starting out, what would you do today?George <br /> Lois: I say that I would do a magazine, you know, but I probably <br />would start an ad agency and show everybody how it's done, you know? <br />There was an article that I just read the other day, what's funny is you <br /> read 30 magazines, you can't remember where you read it, you know? In <br />the old days if you read something in Esquire, what Esquire, one of my <br />covers, you remembered where you saw it, but that's beside the point. <br />But there was an article about the head of the third largest agency in <br />the world, Publicis, I guess, you know, Maurice Levy, and the questions <br />with answers, it goes on and on and all he talks about is technology. I <br /> mean, he said not one fucking word talking about his ad agency that <br />mentions creativity. It's like, it's like it's got nothing to do, the <br />product's got nothing to do with what they do, you know, what they're <br />about. It's shocking, you know?That's the way it used to be <br />with all the ad agencies, I remember, there were agencies like Ogilvy <br />and Mather... and after David Ogilvy died and they talked about him and <br />the reason they sold themselves on the fact that they were a scientific <br />agency in the sense that they did this great research and I told <br />everybody, you know, advertising isn't a science, it's an art! I mean, <br />science, and to this day, most people who judge advertising in the <br />world, certainly in America, they've all got their marketing schools and <br /> communication schools and when they, and they've been taught that <br />advertising and marketing is a science, because how do you teach it's an <br /> art? You know, I mean, what would these schools say for advertising <br />and marketing is an art? How do you teach that, you know?So, to <br /> this day, the way you show clients, most clients something and you send <br /> in something really edgy and they'll look at it and they'll say, "Very <br />interesting," and they'll hand it to somebody who's sitting next to them <br /> and they're a senior VP and say, "Very interesting, research it and <br />find out if I like it." People don't talk about the creativity of <br />something. It's astounding, in all walks of life. Starting with head <br />of one of these giant ad agencies, you know. But I was talking about <br />Ogilvy and Mather, and I remember, a woman was the head of the agency <br />and she went on and on and on and on and on about the way they research, <br /> et cetera, et cetera, et cetera and it's about time, blah, blah, blah, <br />and not one mention of creativity. And people like Bill Bernbach, when <br />he did Doyle, Dane, Bernbach or people like me with Papert, Koenig, <br />Lois, and you know, Mary Wells with Wells, Rich, Greene, that's all we <br />talked about was creativity. What the fuck else is there to talk <br />about? That's the name of the game, it's the product, you know? It's <br />when you talk to a guy ... at Ford, he talks about the car. About the <br />product, you know? <br />Recorded April 5, 2010
