George Lois
George Lois, Mad As Hell
George Lois is nothing if not opinionated. The universally heralded adman and creator of Esquire's most canonical covers from the '60s, shares his take on AMC's Mad Men with The New York Times Magazine's Alex Witchel this week:
When I hear ‘Mad Men,’ it’s the most irritating thing in the world to me. When you think of the ’60s, you think about people like me who changed the advertising and design worlds. The creative revolution was the name of the game. This show gives you the impression it was all three-martini lunches. ...
We worked from 5:30 in the morning until 10 at night. read more »
Mob Hits for April 14, 2008
Is This Thing On? Time's James Poniewozik put out a call to his readers for their reactions to VH1's Rock of Love. "I'm not really qualified to hold forth on VH1's Rock of Love II, having joined the series for, oh, about the last half-hour of the finale (I won't spoil, don't worry). But it seems like the sort of show that inspires, um, passions, so I'll throw this thread open to your opinions on Bret's choice between Daisy and Ambre," he writes. As of now, only one person's responded and that's to praise the amazing talent of ... Paul Giamatti?
Inside Baseball: Also in Time, Michael Kinsley exposes the long-simmering feud between writers and editors and offers "an apology to any writers I may have treated callously over my years as an editor. If I didn't answer your e-mail, I'm sorry. If the check was late or the amount less than agreed on, please forgive me." He also asserts that "On the Internet, they don't have editors," which is more or less what Ken Auletta fretted about twelve years ago in a New Yorker profile of Mr. Kinsley called "The Re-Education of Michael Kinsley" in which he wrote, "If [Esther] Dyson's guess—and it can be only that—is correct, then Kinsley the editor is destined to become another middleman, another roadkill in the abyss of cyberspace." (Remember 'cyberspace'?) read more »
Ally Hilfiger: Does Socialite Mean 'Giving Back to the World'?
After running into Ally Hilfiger, daughter of fashion designer Tommy Hilfiger and the recent subject of a Page Six Magazine cover story, we decided to ask her how she reacted to the piece.
“My mom’s name is not Sheila; it’s Susie, which is funny, because we kind of laughed about that. But other than that, they really understood where I was coming from and I was really honest,” she told the Daily Transom last night at a party hotelier Andre Balazs and GQ magazine co-hosted for Mr. Hilfiger and ad wizard George Lois’ new book, Iconic America: A Roller-Coaster Ride Through the Eye-Popping Panorama of American Pop Culture.
Ms. Hilfiger, 22, purports to enjoy attending events at night, but she winces a little upon hearing the word “socialite.”
“I believe in giving back to the world. And however I can do that is my goal, one of my goals in life. If that labels me as a socialite, so be it. But I’d like to be known more for my talent and for my creativity, as well as giving back to underprivileged people, sick people and charities and things like that. My main goal is definitely not to go to a lot of parties and go out all the time and be seen. It’s more to do better for the world,” Ms. Hilfiger said.
Plus, she doesn’t have much time for party-hopping these days. Ms. Hilfiger, who just designed a t-shirt for Izzy Gold (“a hip, cool line”), said she is currently working on several upcoming art shows and is in talks to star in a theatrical production on Broadway. read more »
Passing the Gladwell Point
Immature Magazines Borrow; Mature Magazines Pay Homage
Left, RADAR (via Gawker); Right, Esquire, April 1968.
Update: It turns out that the art director with the balls to rip off George Lois' legendary Esquire cover was none other than... George Lois. (Very sneaky, RADAR!)
From a press release just received at Mob HQ:
--Matt HaberRadar magazine's Maer Roshan has brought legendary adman and cover designer genius George Lois out of retirement to design the issue's September/October issue, on sale August 16th. [...] "Magazines don't even try to do covers with actual ideas any more," Lois says in the forthcoming issue of Radar. "I get calls from these big magazine conferences -- always some big goddamn deal -- and they're always the same thing: 'Could you come down, George, and make a speech about why all magazine covers suck?' Screw that! Everybody knows that already! You can't just slap a picture of Nicole Kidman on your cover and expect people to say, 'Wow! What a cover!' It's just another picture of Nicole. Who gives a shit?"
