In professional work - certainly in the arts and graphics - 99% of people have zero courage. They blow with the wind.
George LoisRead
I don't design. I get what I think is a big idea, and I put the idea down. I'm not a designer. I'm a communicator.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the distinction between mere design and the power of communication in conveying ideas.
George Lois highlights the importance of communicating ideas effectively rather than focusing solely on the aesthetic aspects of design. He sees himself not merely as a designer but as a communicator who translates big ideas into messages that resonate with people, suggesting that the essence of creativity lies in conveying thoughts and stories rather than just creating visually appealing forms.
In practice
In a speech about creativity in marketing campaigns.
In professional work - certainly in the arts and graphics - 99% of people have zero courage. They blow with the wind.
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.
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.
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.
I've done truth to power all my life. It's got me into trouble, but who cares?
Great advertising, in and of itself, becomes a benefit of the product.
Anything can become a musical sound. The wind on telegraph wires is a great sound; get it into your machine and play it and it becomes interesting.
Every time I try to retire, or even think of retiring from acting, my agent comes up with a script.
I always had a lot of fun in America, with much more freedom than if I had tried to cook in France. I wouldn't have the same motivation or inspiration, and I wouldn't have cooked for the same kind of people in France, so it wouldn't have given me this edge I had in America.
We attempted perfection; we wanted an object to be without flaw, so we cut the papers with a razor, pasted them down meticulously, but it buckled and was ruined... that is why we decided to tear prewrinkled paper, so that in the finished work of art imperfection would be an integral part, as if at birth death were built in.
Elegance is not an outer quality, but a part of the soul that is visible to others.
I try to bring the audience's own drama - tears and laughter they know about - to them.
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