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FOR THOSE WHO are still putting together Powerpoint presentations and relying on the 90s style images provided, we have some bad news.
Microsoft has decided to get rid of Clip Art, its image library that was part of Microsoft Office.
“The Office.com Clip Art and image library has closed shop,” Microsoft announced in a blog post. “Usage of Office’s image library has been declining year-to-year as customers rely more on search engines.” (Microsoft took down the post for a short while before posting it again without this second line)
Clip Art was one of those features you used in Word or Powerpoint anytime you wanted to, although it was very much a product of its time.
While these images were around as far back as 1985, Microsoft introduced it as part of its Office suite in 1996. It first started off with 82 clip art files before increasing this to 140,000 in the latest versions.
Alongside the usual images, it also included WordArt which allowed you to type in any text and have it recreated in a different font or colours.
However, the growing popularity of search engines and image searching meant its days were numbered.
As a replacement, Microsoft is pointing people towards Bing Image Search as a way of finding images. According to a blog post made by the company, its image search uses a copyright filter based on the Creative Commons licensing system.
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Many a poster, b/day card, invitations were created out of this, I for one will miss it.
Im still grieving that over happy paperclip. Think he got a job with handy manny since
I liked the little einstein as my helper
You seem to be trying to write an obituary. Would you like me to help you with it?
* Yes
* No, just leave me alone
Oooh alan thats notions!
Bing…. HAHAHAHAHA!!
There’s another side to this. These clip art images were all usable by charities etc for free and now it becomes much more difficult to be assured that an image can be used. I use clip art in my work to make documents and information accessible to people with limited literacy skills and disabilities. It’s actually going to have some pretty big repercussions for me tbh.
best start sticking them all into a word document then!
To be fair if I see posters, etc done in clipart I ignore them
They’re terrible and pretty unprofessional to be honest
As for the article says, the bing image search will filter for images that do not require copyright permission – ie. the creative commons licence
I wouldn’t ignore them. I just think: aww
Life in no motion, I agree, I don’t like how they look at all, but a lot of disability groups have done research with their members and the clip art symbols and images seem to be the best and most understood by the target group.
NO MORE WORDART? my thesis is screwed :(
I didn’t know it was still a thing =o
YOINK!
BING… It’s still a thing (TM)
Snipping tool is the best thing ever, i call it “the Internet scissors”
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