blog.lmorchard.com

passing the turing test since 1975

Microsoft and Clip Art Follies

This is why I love the web & blogosphere these days. It's getting just a little harder to get away with bullshit every day. :) Threads cross at on Dave's site and Metafilter, among other sites, and Microsoft's counter-Switch ad is revealed.

Man. And they even used a clip art image for the "real person". I've not been in the web biz, ad biz, or promotions biz for very long at all, but I've already developed a cynical chuckle for clip art people. I've either searched through sources myself, or been at the shoulder of a creative director while she or he did the searching. It doesn't take very long until you can nail it when you see it.

But clip art in and of itself isn't bad - it's when an attempt is made to pass the clip art over as some kind of candid reality... that's when a company really shows how smart they think you are. :)

(Oh, and P.S.: Can you people please stop using those "photographer standing on a stool over a model looking up" posed images? It really doesn't convey hip, cool, or clever.)

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Archived Comments

  • Shawn

    Ah, but it gets better, Les. Check the "Update" I posted here: http://algorhythm.org/archives/2002/10/14/im_not_really_a_switcher.html
  • l.m.orchard

    Gah! Now if someone would just do something like this on purpose, it would make for a clever game. Otherwise, it's so incredibly like the cliche marketroid.
  • Tony Collen

    >(Oh, and P.S.: Can you people please stop using those "photographer standing on a stool over a model looking up" posed images? It really doesn't convey hip, cool, or clever.) deus, I've been complaining about this cliche for a while. It's terribly over-used, and I generally see it in two places: 1) Large monolithic corporations trying to "get jiggy wit it" 2) Wanna-be smaller companies that think it makes them look like they're a big monolithic corporation that wants to "get jiggy wit it" Tony
  • Tony Collen

    As an added bonus note, I want to start the craze of photographing hipster models at a low angle, making them look menacing, something like a dot-com jolly green giant. Ho, ho ho!
  • Keith Gaughan

    Here here! Those kind of pictures really get up my nose. They're the clip-art equivalent of the whole swooshes thing.
  • Promo

    I am glad to see someone else noticed the abundance of "shot from above" photos. And I don't know what library they are from, but I see some of them over and over. Usually the blonde gal with short hair holding up (insert product here). Enough already!
  • Keith Gaughan

    Corbis, if I remember correctly, have an emmense number of those shots. Let's face it - the things are worse than cheese - it's smegma!
  • Queeta

    ummm yeah i thought that this was suppose to be a site where you get clip art/pictures of photographers.
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