Opinion

Graphis, Mar/Apr 2004 by Vienne, Veronique

VERONIQUE VIENNE THE "DESIGNERS NOT WANTED" SIGN

When my graphic design students at the School of Visual Arts in New York present their work using the PowerPoint software, my heart sinks. What a bummer. As far as I am concerned, the program is a Trojan Horse. Even though it doesn't contain concealed instructions designed to subvert data or destroy files, it does act like a computer virus in the mind of its user. Even the most brilliant designers are corrupted by the deceptive simplicity of PP's templates.

Let's not forget that PP was deliberately engineered 10 years ago to allow corporate decision makers to bypass graphic designers. It offers ready-made layouts for slide presentations in a pre-selected range of fonts, colors, charts, land textures. Equivalent to a "Designers Not Wanted" sign, it gives graphically-challenged business people the illusion of visual expertise-but it robs designers of their creativity.

True creativity is a messy affair (barring Picasso, of course, who quipped "I don't search, I find."). Programs like PP go out of their way to clean up the design process and sterilize the imagination. Unlike white sheets of paper or blank documents that bring out a feeling of anxiety in most of us, the software's color coordinated templates make spatial organization seem less intimidating. Its predetermined layouts elicit a false sense of security. Nestled within bars, listed in well-defined color fields, punctuated by bullets, the words one types on PP slides acquire instant pseudo-authority.

Once, I tested PP's ability to deliver phony certainties by using its popular AutoContent Wizard feature to develop a plan for a book project I was working on. In less than two hours I had mapped out the scope of the project, including a list of prime risks, necessary resources, and most cost-effective procedures. I even threw in a couple of charts tracking the various market trends most likely to affect the sales of my soon-to-be-written book. I was quite pleased with the result. As background for my slides, I had picked a buoyant yellow ochre with a speckled texture. For the typeface, I hesitated between Bradley and Georgia, eventually settling for Courier, tightly letter-spaced.

I was pretty sure I could sell my book on the merits of this presentation alone. There was only one problem: eventually, someone would have to write my book-and that someone was me!

Mocking PowerPoint's phony efficiency is great fun. Artist and musician David Byrne could not resist. A couple of years ago, he embarked on a large scale PP's spoofing project that turned out to be surprisingly compelling. Unlike my students, who accept the design premises of PP without questioning them, David Byrne decided to push the graphic capabilities of the program as far at it will go to create a short conceptual art film.

The result, a recently published book called Emotional Epistemological Information features stills from Byrne's 20-minute DVD animation included with the hand-somely slip-cased volume. A parody at first, Byrne's final presentation reveals the hidden beauty of PP's punctuation marks and directional arrows, flow charts and information icons. His minimal musical score, that plays up the austere quality of the software's ponderous graphic elements, transforms what could have been a silly exercise into a moving and elegant art piece.

Byrne's book makes reference to the work of Edward R. Tufte, the Yale University professor who is the author of a number of books on computer science and statistics, including Envisioning Information. Like Byrne, Tufte could not resist picking apart the software's stitted corporate approach. His recently self-published booklet, The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint, denounces the visual hypocrisy of the Microsoft program which, he writes, "leads to over-generalizations, imprecise statements, slogans, lightweight evidence, abrupt and thinly-argued claims."

But the most damming criticism of PP's design-without-designer approach is Apple's Keynote program. Marketed as a hip alternative, the Apple presentation tool wants to do away with designers once and for all. In large letters on the box, it promises "Stunning slides-without a graphics department." And sure enough, Keynote's attention-grabbing visuals and charts have the polished Apple signature style-fool-proof good taste for the discriminating set. The templates are "themed" with names like Letterpress, Parchment, Sandstone, or Leatherbook. Instead of mere bullets, you can now choose dots that look like dewdrops, pushpins, or pebbles. Here, the designer is replaced by a decorator. You can pitch your clients with presentation slides as tastefully arranged as matching pillows on a sofa. I am contemplatinq banninq PP and reintroducinq finqer paint in my class.