George Lois in Memorandum

George Lois is at the forefront of the 1960’s evolution of modern day advertising; the MOMA icon of Madison Avenue. Listen to his son Luke Lois in conversation about the inimitable legacy his father left behind.

An Audacious Blend of Image and Word...

A fury to communicate...

I'm so pleased that Luke Lois, the son of the Madison Avenue legend George Lois could join me today. Sadly, George recently passed away in November, but few can say they have lived life so fully that they have left a legacy to inspire behind them as he did.

George Lois transformed our point of view  with images and language in an unmatched body of work that epitomized the words, "Thinking critically and seeking truth are acts of rebellion.”

And let me share a  few words from the AD Awards Hall of Fame, to which George was inducted in 1978.

“A new species of advertising art was becoming discernible. It was strikingly graphic and visually “alive.” It was entirely different from what had gone before. A creative upheaval was gathering force. This new expressiveness was structured as a work method in 1948 when William Bernbach founded Doyle Dane Bernbach. In his new agency, an art director and a copywriter worked as a creative pair. The idea of using artist-writer teams as the prime source of advertising was positively revolutionary. From this union the New Advertising was born. Madison Avenue would never be the same.” 

I’ve collected a few of my favorite images, because for those of you that do not know, in the ten years between 1962 and 1972 George Lois created ninety-two iconic covers for Esquire Magazine of which thirty-one have a permanent home at MOMA in New York.  I want to have Luke share his overview as with those of us who didn't live through the heyday of the sixties, seventies and eighties and who might need a contextual refresher for why these images were so iconic,  provocative,  groundbreaking, and radical in their day. 

1968: the magazine cover of Mohammed Ali as San Sebastien pierced by arrows is one of the most famous in American history. As Oliver Munday  for The Atlantic wrote,  it ” manages to confront race, religion and the Vietnam War in a single conceptual image that is as Brutal as it is Brilliant.”

And just let me prefix the images with a few more words, 

“If one were to choose a single word to characterize the Lois approach, it would be “simplify.” In a milieu where fools and frauds do run ideas up flagpoles to see if someone salutes, where clients are understandably conservative and admen are predictably cautious, where committees reign and lawyers restrain, the heathen from Kingsbridge has been infusing such alien qualities as clarity, intelligence and taste into American advertising.”