Many believe that successful creative accomplishments result from intelligent design.

Such intelligent design is said to be uniquely human and to involve inspiration, insight, and foresight.

A very different view is growing in prominence and is based on the evolutionary idea of natural selection.

This more behavioral selectionist view places primary emphasis on context, coincidence, and consequence.

The MGM leonine logo is one of cinema’s most enduring images—a roaring lion encircled by the motto Ars Gratia Artis on a looping strip of film. Its origin is a fascinating story, but not only because of its rich historical details. It’s fascinating because it credibly debunks a longstanding notion in psychology: that iconic creative accomplishments result from intelligent design by gifted geniuses.

In fact, the MGM logo was the work of Howard Dietz, a 19-year-old advertising apprentice who, in 1917, was tasked by his agency to do the logo work for a full-page ad in the Saturday Evening Post announcing Goldwyn Pictures to the general public. Upstart studio head Samuel Goldwyn insisted that the ad feature vivid artwork as well as highlight a catchy phrase that would proclaim the studio’s commitment to producing: “Pictures built upon the strong foundation of intelligence and refinement.”

Dietz never finished his degree at Columbia University. Still, he chose the kingly lion as the studio emblem because it was the school’s official mascot and the symbol of the school’s humor magazine. Dietz also called upon his limited knowledge of Latin, naively assuming that he could directly translate the English phrase “art for art’s sake” into Latin to provide the required gravitas to the Goldwyn logo. However, the phrase “ars gratia artis” turns out to be both grammatically nonsensical and ironically opposite in meaning to his intent.

Clearly, young Dietz followed no sophisticated master plan. He improvised, borrowed, and blundered along to complete his very first advertising assignment. Nevertheless, the result was to become one of the most recognized brand symbols in history.

Many people still assume that successful creative accomplishments—logos, artworks, scientific theories, inventions—must reflect the insight, foresight, and enlightened planning of their creators. This assumption has a long philosophical pedigree. Theologian William Paley argued in 1802 that the extraordinary complexity and functionality of both nature’s creations and human artifacts demand an intelligent designer to produce them. In line with this view, creativity is a special cognitive trait possessed by visionary individuals who conceive of an end goal and then proceed to execute it.

A very different perspective has been gaining prominence, one rooted in the evolutionary thinking of biologist Charles Darwin and extended to human behavior by behaviorist B. F. Skinner. This selectionist view holds that creative products—including many of the most celebrated ones—often emerge not from preconceived design but from the interplay of three factors: context, coincidence, and consequence.

Context refers to the particular circumstances, pressures, and resources surrounding a creator at a given moment. Dietz was a young novice under pressure to deliver a logo that would project prestige for a fledgling film company. That context shaped what he cobbled together—the familiar lion from his college days and the presumed seriousness of a Latin phrase—without any vision of what the final product would become or represent.

Coincidence refers to the role of chance in generating variation. Dietz’s garbled Latin translation was not a stroke of genius; it was an accidental deviation from his limited linguistic experience. Yet it produced something that worked—aesthetically, commercially, culturally—in ways he never anticipated.

Consequence refers to the selective retention of variations that prove rewarding and the abandonment of those that do not. Just as natural selection retains traits that promote survival, Skinner’s selection by reinforcement holds that behaviors—including creative acts—are shaped by their consequences. Dietz’s imperfect logo was nonetheless embraced, repeated, and refined. Over the decades, it was culturally selected and became an enduring icon. No one designed that trajectory; it emerged and evolved from variations shaped by reinforcement from audiences, studio executives, and cultural practice.

What makes the MGM logo story especially remarkable is that Dietz and Goldwyn had audaciously aligned the primitive commercial movies of 1917 with fine art—a vision so ahead of its time that it seemed almost absurd. Yet only a decade later, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was founded on precisely that premise. Was this prescience? Perhaps. But it is equally well explained by a selectionist account: The idea was floated, the cultural environment rewarded it, and history did the rest.

The mentalistic view of creativity—that it flows from inspiration, insight, and foresight—is deeply flattering to human self-conception. It preserves what philosopher Daniel Dennett called the illusion of human authorship and our sense of a divine creative spark. But psychology’s growing selectionist tradition suggests a more unassuming and possibly more accurate picture: that even the most iconic creative achievements can be shaped by the same blind, contingency-driven process that Darwin identified in nature—context, coincidence, and consequence operating across time.

Today’s familiar MGM lion didn’t roar because someone planned it that way. It roared because the evolving technology of motion pictures allowed it to do so. Remember: Films were silent when Dietz crafted the logo!

Altman, D. (1993). STUDIO LOGOS: Leo the Lion Flunked Latin. New York Times, February 7. https://www.nytimes.com/1993/02/07/arts/l-studio-logos-leo-the-lion-flunked-latin-815193.html

Altman, D. (1992/2010). Hollywood East: Louis B. Mayer and the Origins of the Studio System. New York: Tapley Cove Press.

Andresky Fraser, J. (1993). What’s in a Symbol? Not the Statue of Liberty. New York Times, January 17. https://www.nytimes.com/1993/01/17/archives/film-whats-in-a-symbol-not-the-statue-of-liberty.html

Dietz, H. (1974). Dancing in the dark: Words by Howard Dietz: An autobiography. New York: Quadrangle-New York Times.

Dietz, Howard: Songwriters Hall of Fame.

Howard Dietz biography in: The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives. Volume One, 1981-1985, pp. 233-234. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1998.

Wasserman, E. A. (2021). As if by design: How creative behaviors really evolve. Cambridge University Press.

Wasserman, E. A. (2025). Decoupling design from Darwinian and Skinnerian selection. Perspectives on Behavior Science. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40614-025-00476-y

"Laughing Lion Inspired MGM Lion." Columbia College Today. Spring 2016. https://www.college.columbia.edu/cct/issue/spring16/article/did-you-know

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