“I thinkadvertising should be like poison gas. It should grip you by the throat, itshould bowl you over.” So said George Lois, the pioneering art directorwhose “big ideas” in the 60s cut through the smarmy sentimentalism ofadvertising in the previous decade, replacing it with bold, rebelliousgestures, white space and an arresting, modernist design aesthetic. Though Loiswas responsible for reinventing MTV, ESPN and Tommy Hilfiger,he is most famed—and rightly so—for his decade-long series of coversfor Esquire beginningin 1962. These daring images, which included Muhammad Ali posing as StSebastian and Andy Warhol drowning in a can of Campbell's soup, confronted theissues of the time with intuitive humor and immediacy, inspiring designers fordecades after. George Lois: The EsquireCovers at MOMA is out from Assouline in March.