In professional work - certainly in the arts and graphics - 99% of people have zero courage. They blow with the wind.
George LoisRead
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.
Interpretation
When everyone is following a trend, it often indicates that innovation lies in pursuing a different path.
George Lois suggests that in creative fields, observing a collective movement towards a specific direction can signal the necessity for change and innovation. Instead of adhering to trends, true creativity flourishes when one dares to explore uncharted areas, as this often leads to unique and original expressions.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of originality, this quote illustrates why it's vital to break away from established norms.
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.
I've done truth to power all my life. It's got me into trouble, but who cares?
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.
Great advertising, in and of itself, becomes a benefit of the product.
It's how creativity works. Especially in humans. For every good idea, ten thousand idiotic ones must first be posed, sifted, tried out, and discarded. A mind that's afraid to toy with the ridiculous will never come up with the brilliantly original.
Discovering a new explanation is inherently an act of creativity.
The creative process requires more than reason. Most original thinking isn't even verbal. It requires 'a groping experimentation with ideas, governed by intuitive hunches and inspired by the unconscious.' The majority of business men are incapable of original thinking because they are unable to escape from the tyranny of reason. Their imaginations are blocked.
So much of the work is intuitive. The resistance you detect is just that, a kind of evasion, a sense that too much analysis will inhibit creativity.
Reinvent new combinations of what you already own. Improvise. Become more creative. Not because you have to, but because you want to. Evolution is the secret for the next step.
Usually when I start a new project there's a fear of the unknown; maybe it's a band I've never been in the studio with before. People are so different. It's almost like you need to go through the process, discover and unlock what it is that makes that band that band. And a lot of times they don't know it.
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