Long before performative provocation became de rigueur for many media makers, ad man George Lois was drowning Andy Warhol in a can of Campbell’s soup.

The so-called “original” Mad Man, Lois had a side hustle creating covers for Esquire magazine during its 60s era heyday under the editorship of Harold Hayes. The famed 1969 Warhol cover was dreamed up over lunch with Hayes, as a means of spoofing the death of the avant-garde while letting Warhol play the martyr of his own brand.

As Lois recounted to The Atlantic’s Alex Hoyt in 2012, “You could look at it as just funny, or you look at it as how fame swallows people—the absurdity of fame. He’s drowning in his own soup. He created himself. He was a walking logo, you know.”

And Lois was a walking icon.

Today, June 26, marks Lois’ 93rd birthday—had he lived. He missed it only by a few years, having died in November of 2022. Still, I’m raising a dry martini to the man today.

He was as complex man as his work was nuanced.The Wall Street Journal lauded him as a “prodigy, enfant terrible, founder of agencies, creator of legends.” But his former creative partner, Julian Koenig, once opined to This American Life, “His talent is only exceeded by his omnivorous ego.”

Be that as it may, Lois was at least generous with his advice, or at least knew how to package it, which he did in a tidy volume with the untidy title Damn Good Advice (For People with Talent!), How to Unleash Your Creative Potential by America’s Master Communicator.

From Lois’ own book of wisdom:

The joy of the creative process, digging and aspiring for an answer, becomes euphoric when you finally get the Big Idea. That joy of the creative process, minute by minute, hour after hour, day by day, is the sublime path to true happiness.

And in this moment—when the signal-to-noise ratio is a farce, algorithms are a blood sport, and AI feasts on creative minds like a horde of gluttonous zombies—Lois’ immortal words hit like gospel. The Big Idea is still worth chasing, even if it’s just for the fleeting, electric joy of catching it.

You know you’ve made it when your book is in a stock footage archive.