Who

A legendary (and legendarily nutty) art director, George Lois is best known for his series of famous Esquire covers and for conceiving MTV's first marketing campaign.

Backstory

Raised in the Bronx, the son of Greek immigrant florists, Lois was part of the contingent that spearheaded the so-called "creative revolution" at ad agency Doyle Dane Bernback in the late 1950s. (Just one of his DDB home runs: Volkswagen's "Think small" campaign.) In 1960, he and fellow DDB creative revolutionaries Frederic Papert and Julian Koenig hung out their own shingle, launching Papert Koenig Lois; there, Lois came up with popular campaigns for Aunt Jemima, Xerox, Lean Cuisine (the name itself was his brainchild), and Maypo ("I want my maypo!"). Already a star within the ad industry, he started gaining recognition beyond Madison Avenue in 1962, when he created the first of his 92 soon-to-be-iconic covers for Esquire, featuring visuals like Andy Warhol drowning in a man-sized can of Campbell's soup and Muhammad Ali as a crucified Saint Sebastian.

Lois's next major contribution to the pop-culture landscape came in the early 80s, when he was tapped to hatch a campaign for an upstart music channel by the name of MTV; his "I Want My MTV" campaign featuring pitchman Mick Jagger prompted millions of Americans to call their cable companies to demand that they carry the nascent network. A few years later, Lois was partly responsible for igniting the buzz that surrounded Tommy Hilfiger thanks to a series of ads on the back of Manhattan telephone booths. During the '90s, he worked on campaigns for Reebok, ESPN, and Pepsi. Lois has since settled into quasi-retirement (In 2005, Lois retooled his famous Ali martyr cover for an issue of on-again/off-again magazine Radar—this time casting Tom Cruise as St. Sebastian.) Nonetheless he looms large as an industry icon and speaks frequently at conventions; his Esquire covers, which will no doubt lead off his obituary, were the subject of a 2008 exhibition at the MoMA.

Trophy case

Lois has won pretty much every award an art director can. He's been inducted into the Art Director's Club Hall of Fame, the Creative Hall of Fame and been awarded the AIGA Gold Medal.

In person

Now in his mid-seventies, Lois's personality hasn't changed much over the years: He's still an irrepressible braggart and a reliably foul-mouthed quote-o-mat on everything from the current state of the advertising business (wretched, by his estimation) to his long-running association with Muhammad Ali. His views on both are informed by (and invariably peppered with) tales of his own accomplishments—like the time he threatened to throw himself out the window at a client pitch or how he persuaded Ali's Nation of Islam handlers to allow the champ to pose on the cover of Esquire as a Christian martyr. When he regales interviewers with his past exploits, every third or fourth word out of his mouth is "fuck."

In print

Lois is the author of six books, including $ellebrity, Covering the 60s, and Ali Rap. HisIconic America, co-written with Tommy Hilfiger, was published in 2007.

Personal

Lois and his wife Rosemary live on West 12th Street, in the same building as David Vigliano. He has one son, Luke, a photographer. Another son, Harry, died at the age of 20.