Damn Good Advice (For People with Talent!) is a look into the mind of one of America’s most legendary creative thinkers, George Lois. Offering indispensle lessons, practical advice, facts, anecdotes and inspiration, this book is a timeless creative bible for all those looking to succeed in life, business and creativity.
All the tools in the world are meaningless without an essential idea
An artist, an advertising man, or anyone involved in a creative industry (or even noncreative professions such as a doctor, lawyer, electrician, factory worker, or president) without an idea, is unarmed. In the graphic arts, when that original idea springs out of a creative’s head and intuitions, the mystical and artful blending (or even juxtaposition) of concept, image, words, and art can lead to magic, where one and one can indeed be three.
But creating ideas without a work ethic to follow through is inconceivable to me
If you don’t burn out at the end of each day, you’re a bum!People watching me work ask me all the time why I’m not burnt out, how (especially now at my age) I manage to keep going. The fact is, I’m totally burnt out at the end of each day because I’ve given myself totally to my work–mentally, psychologically, physically. When I head home at night I can’t see straight. But I love that feeling of utter depletion: It is an ecstatic sense of having committed myself to the absolute limit. But after recharging at night, I’m ready to go the next morning.Isn’t that waht life is all about?
I don’t think I create anything. I’m really serious. I discover the ideas.
If you understand how to think… If you have a background of graphic art, and you are a sports fan, and you’re literate, and you’re interested in politics, and you love opera, and ballet’s not bad either, and if you understand people… and you understand language, and you understand that product, and you understand the competitive products…and you put that all together in about ten minutes—the idea is there.
Complement Damn Good Advice (For People with Talent!) with How to make ideas survive with the principles of success. Chip Heath & Dan Heath, authors of Made to Stick, are interested in how effective ideas are constructed—what make some ideas stick and others disappear. In this way, they tell us that what stick is systematic creativity.