LuxFX / They Think They’re Newsworthy

Oh I just remembered, this was kind of funny earlier today….

Now, a few months ago I went with Jen to a luncheon with her Women’s Business group (she attends this series of classes/meetings/seminars through the museum). I happened to sit right next to this guy who ran a small graphic art / ad. agency! (Kind of a one-man deal I think, like me) We hit it right off and traded cards. Well, this morning I found a message from him on my cell phone. He said he had a project I might be able to help him with, and would I call him back.

Well, I tried several times during the day, and by early afternoon I finally talked with him. This is how it went….

Him: I need a Powerpoint presentation. Do you do anything with Powerpoint?
Me: Actually, I try and avoid Powerpoint.
Him: Really? Is it too difficult?
Me: !!!!!!!!!!! Um….no actually quite the opposite. It’s just not powerful enough — when I make presentations I do them in Flash.
Him: Oh….

It turned out he had already found somebody else anyway, but Powerpoint? Powerpoint, if you don’t know my work-side well enough, is just about as close as it comes to being my archnemesis. I absolutely hate it. Did you know there are studies that show that using Powerpoint leads to uncomprehendable data? The New York Times article’s headline was PowerPoint Makes You Dumb. That says it all!

But the biggest problem, that nobody will tell you about, is that there are a lot of … shall we say, computer challenged … clients out there that think PowerPoint is a valid image format. Why send a JPEG!? We can send it in this Microsoft proprietary format that shrinks the image beyond use and forces the designer to resort to a screen capture to try and get it out of the document! Fortunately, these days I’m using the OpenOffice version of PowerPoint, where it is actually possible to export the images in their original resolution. Whew! But it’s still an extra four or five steps I should have to take.

I swear, some of these things I just need to say, “I’m sorry, I’ll have to fine you for your use of those images.”

Unfortunately there was a lot of problem with thinking that PowerPoint was an image format. I spend about four hours today extracting a handful of images from each of a few dozen PowerPoint files, into a format I can actually use. Four hours that could have been avoided had they sent me the images before including them in PowerPoint.

..end gripe..

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 31st, 2004 at 11:38 pm and is filed under Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.