That creaking sound you hear…
…is my elderly braincells springing into action. We’re getting a new touch-screen kiosk at work that runs entirely on PowerPoint. I’ve worked on oodles and oodles of PowerPoint presentations. Like, twenty years ago.
Fortunately, I got a copy of PowerPoint with Office at home and, from what I can tell poking around, it hasn’t changed much.
In my corporate gig, back before PowerPoint came out in the late Eighties, my department made upwards of 100,000 physical 35mm slides a year. The process became more digital over time, but we still created them in the art department.
Then I remember the newly-hired fancy-pants head of IT sitting with me to work on a slideshow, telling me that my services wouldn’t be needed as soon as everyone had their copy of PowerPoint and could do their own presentations.
Hilariously, that’s not what happened.
Turns out it’s not a smart use of resources to task an elite engineer on an elite engineer’s salary to spend hours fussing about fonts and colors and transitions. I mean, they loved doing it, but it was a serious time waster and they sucked at it. Engineers are not known for their aesthetics.
I remember one Indian engineer who created all his graphs in multiple eye-raping colors. He explained cheerfully that his data was so boring, this was the only way to make his presentations bearable.
The illustration above isn’t even all of the possible slide transitions available in PowerPoint. And boy, do engineers love them some slide transitions. Every new slide skittered, slunk, faded, bounced or turned the page onto the screen. It was dizzying.
In the end, either they created an initial presentation and we polished it for them afterwards, or (what usually happened) they gave us notes and we created the whole thing. We were cheaper, faster (I did it all day long!), and (theoretically!) in better taste.
Who’d’a thunk I’d be doing PowerPoints again at my time of life.
Posted: August 7th, 2024 under work.
Comments: 6
Comments
Comment from Uncle Badger
Time: August 7, 2024, 6:54 pm
I remember when DTP appeared on the scene like Zoro, come to save the town. Suddenly everything from press releases for the media to sales brochures looked like rans9mn notes from a psychotic chimpanzee on bad acid.
Some people have absolutely no graphical skills whatsoever. I am one of them.
Comment from QuasiModo
Time: August 7, 2024, 8:09 pm
I did a lot of PowerPoint as well back in the 90’s and messed with tons of transitions. I’d be sitting in the audience watching it all play out and thought, ‘This is stupid’…I only used ‘Wipe Right’ on the slide thereafter and no transitions on individual items on the slide at all.
Comment from Durnedyankee
Time: August 7, 2024, 8:13 pm
Reminds me of being scolded by our group admin for making my own photocopies ( see! I learned not to call them Xeroxes! Remember that phase of you training?)
“You’re paid how much to write programs? ( she knew damn well how much we made…)
” uh….but I didn’t want to bug you and…”
“And which do you think is a better use of EDS’s money?
To have ME make copies at my salary or you to make copies at yours? ( we were big on treating the company money as if it were our own, which we didn’t, because I would have flown American first class and stayed at the Four Seasons instead of flying El Cheapo Continental Cattle Car and staying at the Red Roof Inn if it had been MY money…)”
“Uh…”
” Now give me those and go write some code or something…”
“Uh…thanks Lisa”.
Funny though, because the big plan was to replace us with a 4Gl thaey could use to write the code we were writing.
Comment from Rich Rostrom
Time: August 8, 2024, 1:23 am
“100,000 physical 35mm slides a year…”
400 a day? (assuming 250 working days/year)
Comment from Ben
Time: August 8, 2024, 4:18 am
My company explicitly forbids any slide transitions. Keeps things simple.
Comment from ExpressoBold Pureblood
Time: August 8, 2024, 5:05 pm
So what’s going on regarding demonstrations in Sussex? Is “We wunt be druv” still operant there?
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