Check out Envato Elements 👉 1.envato.market/c/3671954/1159027/4662?subId1=video3 Are you glad Clip Art is gone, or do you feel some nostalgia for it? Describe the clip art image forever burned in your memory, for better or worse.

The last time I saw clip art in the wild was a couple years ago at a gas station in rural New Mexico. There was a sign in the bathroom that said “please don’t flush feminine products,” accompanied by clip art of a handbag, a dress, and a pair of high heels. The creator had clearly just typed in something like “woman” or “feminine” into the MS Word clip art search bar. It was kinda endearing tbh

ClipArt was the most beautiful thing for me when I was little and having fun with PowerPoint. It also housed lots of good midis.

I’m from Gen Z, and I find early 2000s clipart very nostalgic. I really do hate the Allegria art style, not just what it stands for - something about the tiny heads unnerves me.

Clip art is STILL huge. In fact, the last time I checked, it was a billion-dollar industry. It's simply called "stickers" now.

Japan has a clipart library called irasutoya, created by a single person over 20 years, and it is unusually pervasive to this day. I see it all the time still. I think most westerners would recognize the art style if they saw it

It shouldn't be lost on us now, that in 15-20 years time, there'll be a cohort of 20-somethings feeling nostalgic for the Corp. Memphis styles

21:01 I’d even say the clip art aesthetic can be nostalgic for older Gen Z’ers. I remember seeing and even using clip art in the early 2000s, and that aesthetic I definitely associate with my early childhood and messing around with computers.

I think my biggest problem with Corporate Memphis is its ubiquity. It's widely used because it's seen as unoffensive, but that also means it can't really impress. So many things in the world used to have the potential for beauty, but now they're all so safe that they're sterile. A *bit* of modern styling gives a clean impression, omnipresent modern styling feels almost dystopian.

I remember the real problem with clip art was the serious overuse of a small selection of it. namely the free art that came with Microsoft Office. I never knew anyone who had paid for one of those expansion packs. The endless repetition of the same birthday image on every birthday invitation is what killed it.

Nothing screams more "year 2000" than Clipart, Wordart, and Comic Sans combined. It was everywhere!

I'm a millennial so I grew up during the height of Microsoft Office clipart. Those silly little pictures do actually make me a bit nostalgic. I spent so much time finding the *perfect* clipart for my school projects. Also word art! I loved playing around with that as a kid. The good old days

I think the backlash against Alegria/Corporate Memphis style isn't because of its associations, but of its ubiquity, and the fact that it's a single STYLE rather than a type of source for the artwork. Clip art was extremely heterogenous, as an example, you showcased numerous styles of clip art images that were used in the Microsoft Office set, and which were able to stay consistent within that style. But with Corporate Memphis, you have a countless number of artists trying to depict things in just one style, all drawing scenes where the people all have the same exaggerated traits, and using the same or similar methods to show detail or lack thereof. And it's because of that ubiquity and sameness that gives Corporate Memphis its connotations - it's less the message being sent or the validity of the message, but the fact that how it's used and how heavily it gets used have given it permanent associations in the first place. Because of that, everyone who uses it is essentially seen as delivering the exact same message.

Great video, Linus. I was in graphic design school at the University of FL '83-85. We were THE last class to graduate before the program introduced Macs. I learned to do all print design and production the old, manual ways--rubylith, mechanicals, Letraset, rapidograph pens, x-actos, spray mount and Bestine. All of our comp photos were *hand-rendered* using Design markers. (Which meant you HAD to have drawing skills). After graduation I worked in ad agencies and clip art was used constantly. We designers even had our own favorite styles of clip art we tended to use in our ads and print materials. I still have a few file folders of Letraset type sheets and clip art images. The agency finally transitioned to Macs around 1990 and we all had to learn on the job. It was pretty intimidating! However, we adapted eventually and it wasn't long before Quark Xpress and Adobe Illustrator were my two most loved programs.

Clip art is such a good encapsulation of the y2k aesthetic and I'm kinda sad it went away

The transition of the cat from playful to sleepy to just sentimental photos on the wall when Windows 95 rolled around really got to me. I had a ginger cat and lost him in May of last year so that little detail really got to me. :’-(

I feel like the next step for soulless art used by companies is going to be AI art. Creatives will remain adamant against it not being fine art, so it wouldn't exactly replace artists, but it could cause a problem if left unchecked.

Great video as always!! You missed commenting on Mifuni Takashi, a Japanese artist who alone dominated the entire world of clip art/stock images in Japan and has his clip arts used by schools, television and even the Japanese government itself. Drawing clip arts in the same style since 2012, one of the positive points of his work is that he doesn't charge for use if you use up to 20 of his illustrations in a project, and for educational uses, it's totally free. Quite an interesting contrast to Corporate Memphis, an art style that dominates the entire country but is viewed positively.

When you moved into the end section about the modern evolution of clip art, I thought you were going to talk about things like Canva, Creative Commons/Wikimedia, and plain ol' Google Images. For the amateur/home user, those seem to be the most natural successors. They're certainly the tools I use most in the same way I did clip art back in the day. Great video - really enjoyed.

There’s something so intensely satisfying about creating a Power Point and inserting clip art, using the ✨Special Fonts✨ and then summing up with adding ~transitions~ like… I miss that magic

Love how the chronology emulates the "LoFi music to chill/study/relax to" Artwork, fitting the Popcultural symbols of each year.

As a teacher, I still love to use clip art since it's free to use and easily conveys the concepts I'm trying to teach 😊

Just as clipart, the art of fonts is greatly under appreciated.

Japanese clipart has taken its own form and actually become the defacto way of expressing formal messages visually, both in public and corporate contexts. The differences between the clipart we know and the japanese ones for starters is the cohesiveness, given that the japanese one is literally made by a single artist. I sometimes imagine how we would view clipart if we had 1 or a few standard styles that were inoffesive, cohesive and relatively simple, to the degree that they would be used broadly the same way the japanese ones are in their society.

As a kid in the 2000s, Microsoft Word's clipart felt so cool. I'd sometimes just scroll through it just to see what was there. It hadn't occurred to me how long it's been since I've used that feature until this video. I didn't even realize it had been removed, though that isn't particularly surprising.

Okay, its REALLY cool that your sponsor is literally the direct descendant of those original clip books. I love that.

This was practically the story of my career as a graphic designer & illustrator! I started in high school setting lead type with metal art cuts. For many years I worked for Volk Clip Art, Dynamic Graphics, Dover, and several other similar companies. I ran the first Quantel Paintbox that came to town. First image digitizer for any computer, pre-scanner, was a B&W surveillance camera. Most clip art contracts were "work for hire", and many talented illustrators just collected the checks, and didn't care about the rights, or credit. As long as most people can't draw or design original concepts, there will be a need for stock images. We're in the AI age of stock images. This was a fun & **VERY** nostalgic video.

I remember in the late 90s and early 2000s when my grandma (in her late 70s-early 80s), in her senior co op with a computer room, would make clip-art based greeting cards in Corel paint (she worked in hospital admin when they started using computers so she had some familiarity). I always thought it was nice but of course being a kid who grew up with computers I didn't appreciate how unusual it was for her to have that level of technical skill...

25:01 Back in middle school I once told a classmate that she didn't actually hate the color pink, she hated the way it was forced onto young girls. She reluctantly agreed. Personally I don't dislike the "corporate Memphis" style, I'm just tired of seeing it in ads everywhere all the time.

Your final sentiment reminded me of an interview I read a while ago, of a man who developed a short documentary series providing an overview of British B Movies. He explained the "main features" were too polished or created far too removed from everyday reality, while the grittier, cheaper and more unlimited styles and stories told in B Movies were more reflective of the times and every day struggles of people. You can learn a lot from the lowest forms of art, it seems. And unlike high art, it's a more collective expression, so more voices are represented at once.

As far as broadcast graphics go, I don't think we should forget the Amiga. While it only has 8-bit color, that was much more than the Mac and it was cheaper. Attach a genlock and you had all you needed to run your own colorful public access tv channel

I loved clip art, especially adding it to PowerPoints. Those PowerPoints also had the most extra slide transitions. Clip art really jazzed up my book reports in school.

Back when Clip Art was the main form of art you could print at home, a friend of mine wrote a whole letter to me using clip art. It was adorable.

and, of course, the trash is the best place to do archaeology. I don't think I have a single most memorable piece of clip-art, but the style of the owl reading a book really hits my nostalgia buttons.

Looking at turn-of-the-millenium clip art now that it's been removed from its corporate surroundings, it all has quite a lovely charm. I can imagine the Museum of Modern Art hosting an exhibition dedicated to them.

I remember making a bunch of choose your own adventure/ visual novel games in powerpoint with the graphics being made entirely out of clip art. Definitley gave me an appreciation for just how many drawing there were for almost anything you desired.

Man, I'm 30 and some of that clipart really popped the nostalgia feel for me xD The corporate style of today isn't inherently bad, there's just a lot of cheap and terrible examples of it being used. Facebook's rendition looks good, it's got strange proportions but it all fits with the rest of the style and is carried throughout the art. It's more a stylistic, simplistic choice that does its job well. Others that have utilized it don't always keep the style perfect to each item they're working on and it looks technically bad. It's like if you had a movie with a lot of animators but they couldn't replicate whatever was being animated and injected too much of their own style into it.

Another stone cold banger. Love the lo-fi chapter markers

I watched this a day after a frustrating time at work where I struggled to find good stock photography because it has all become oversaturated with ai images now. It's interesting how we tend to value small everyday things like clip art only after it's gone.

I worked in an office and we produced a little 12 page or so newsletter, which I designed on Publisher and illustrated it with mostly clip art. I loved doing it and would leave it as a ‘treat’ when the more serious jobs were done, it was fun playing with the little pictures and finding the right one. It made me feel like a kid again and didn’t like people meddling with it! I suppose emojis fill a similar niche now. 📰😊

As a child of the 90’s I had to take courses in elementary school on how to make power points and HAD to use clip art to show emotion. I was so excited once you got to the PowerPoint section as that was my main introduction to clip art and it’s use.

I don’t use Snapchat but there must be an argument that social media has absolutely taken the baton of Clip Art and rocketed it into space. It’s taken the commercial use of the arts into a language that a large portion of the (young) world uses in its day to day. Thoughts?

The death of clip art makes me sad to think about. My childhood memories of playing with funny little illustrations were reignited watching this. Great video. Thank you.

In 1991 as a 16-year-old I had a week’s work experience at Quantel in Newbury, UK as I was heavily into Deluxe Paint on the Amiga and my Electronics Teacher had been an ex-BBC tech and had contacts there. The technology was light years ahead of anything I’d seen before and it was also the first time I’d seen high definition 24-bit colour and the paintbox was so responsive. Nearly everything happened in real time. I felt like I’d died and visited computer graphics heaven. It was one of the most fantastic experiences of my life and I remember it like it was yesterday. Thanks Mr. Lomas (RIP) for setting it up!

Fantastic audio quality and editing/graphics. Amazing production quality, a fascinating topic, and incredible research! You're basically just hitting a home run here man.

I genuinely hate Alegria/Memphis. Its not just about being corporate, there's a lot of stuff I love that's unfortunately very corporate, its the proportions. There's something really unsettling/creepy about a lot of the proportions on the human figures, with almost nonexistant heads/faces and giant arms/hands and legs, they look uncanny, especially in motion. I know some older clipart had that too but I always got the feeling it was supposed to be a little weird/offputting with its sketchy black and white style, but the alegria seems poisonously cheerful and it makes it freakier.

I think the Alegria/Memphis style looks actually kind of neat, despite being ubiquitous (popularity doesn't make anything bad, even though it can be obnoxious to some people). But what caught my eye at the time that it came to prominence was how similar it was to an illustration style popular in the 70s, that we've seen in movies such as Beatles' Yellow Submarine and also in Sesame Street.

I did a lot of my graphic design training in the early 80s. One thing that was very common in use at the time was Letraset rub on fonts and graphics. The fonts that Letraset created were all available in rub on sheet format - so if you were going to do a design layout it almost always included some rub on elements. What I find interesting is that people still sell them as "vintage" items on Etsy.

I never would have requested a 30 minute video on Clipart but boy am I glad that you've made one

This was such a powerful nostalgia trip, taking me back to the 90s, making school posters with Jokerman and messing around on the pre-installed graphic design apps, through to present day, being a teacher and decorating my own lesson slides and handouts with stock images and imgur memes. Thank you so much.

Another great video. Thanks. I found the particular ad in this video kind of ironic 😂

I remember having a few CDs worth of clip art back in the day. Ahh, memories.

What a beautifully made video, Linus, who knew you'd make me interested in the evolution of clipart. I love how you managed to capture the nostalgia of ClipArt while also providing an accurate and comprehensive history of it. The archival material and case studies you used were on point. The narrative was also extremely well-crafted and your research was top-notch! loved the overall aesthetic of the video, with the lofi hiphop vibe animations (blending in ClipArt and your face).

You're right. This took me back in a way I'd never expect. The woman that would later become my mentor/boss in IT at our school district also leaned over my shoulder in 4th grade and showed me how to use MSPaint and insert clip art. Thank you for the nostalgia internet man.

I'm not a fan of Coldplay. But the Parachutes album in the dumpster tears my preteen heart a little.

I still use clip art every chance I get! It amuses me to think of what peoples reactions will be to my posters, emails, etc.

I've worked as a dubbing mixer for a few years, and your narration is beautifully recorded, edited and mixed. Love it. It helps that the delivery is solid. Well projected, not rushed, well annunciated without being overdone. Keep up the good work!

Linus, the quality of the content and execution in your videos is unmatched - you’re a gifted communicator and it’s a joy to keep diving into design history, retrospectives, and hot takes together. And on a more personal level, I always find your videos a soothing place to return to when I have an anxious or unhappy mind. Just super appreciative of your work ☺️

I recently re-kindled my love for clipart after 25+ years for a retro game project because I was looking for simple vector style graphics that used only a few colours. I have learned a lot about how "less can be more" but also learned a lot about the frustrating limitations that can arise with such a concept. As a kid we used clipart for everything and it gave a personal or "hand made" style feel to a document or even an application (ie. the set that came with Visual Basic). For me it died out when the web 2.0 became a thing, suddenly those simple vector graphics (or banners!) became out dated and looked almost silly when compared to modern documents, websites or applications.

So grateful that my search got me here! I'm a Gen-Xer and your observations on nostalgia around clip art is spot on for me. Loved going on this deep dive with you! Off to see what else you cover!

Overhead transparency projectors were quite scalable to large groups. Typical units may have had only a 100 or to 150 W standard incandescent bulb, but one of the ones I've worked with had a high wattage (using the 20 amp circuit to its max, so probably 440 W) halogen bulb, and served nicely for a 900 seat auditorium projecting on to a 20' tall projection screen (the width is immaterial, since it was often used with cinemascope films via a similar wattage bulb in a 16mm projector with an anamorphic lens). That high powered one would literally induce mild 1st degree burns via infrared. It also would damage some of the lower quality transparency film stock, making it shrivel like shrinky-dinks. (venue is the Wendy Williamson Performing Arts Hall at University of Alaska, Anchorage), I've seen used similarly bright OHP's at the Geo. M. Sullivan Conference Center and at Holy Family Cathedral (both also Anchorage). The bulb at Holy Family was the same type as the one in the Williamson, and the same type as used in the 16mm projectors then in use in the Williamson.

This is your best video yet! Loved the section about the 'death' and post-clipart worlds. slick presentation, socially aware perspective, and memorable humor

In Japan, we have our version of "Clip Art" called "イラスト屋 (Illustration Shop)" People are still using it today. All the images have similar styles, and they have tons of them.

Great video! I like these longer form ones, it seems like you really did the topic justice. What I especially enjoyed was your comparisons of clipart to the styles that preceded and followed it, all with similar functions but remarkably unique visual approaches.

Thank you so much for putting this all together. In addition to being an incredibly powerful piece of educational history, the aesthetics of this video were equally gorgeous. Bravo, this is truly a great watch. Another note: It appears that the "Global Village Coffeehouse" design aesthetic may have been directly inspired by that first scratch art-to-scanner methodology.

this is a fascinating documentary on a very under looked part of everyday mundanity, to be honest I had not noticed clip art had gone away until the other day at a college course I noticed someone had included a confused clip art man in a powerpoint which made me realise I hadn't seen it for years. The corporate memphis style people I feel have a genus in early 2000s subscription magazines, one in particular being from a teaching union I remember my parents always got monthly, that had a very similar style of art work in it

I'm so glad that you mentioned corporate memphis and how it could be our associations with the style that degrades it rather than the visuals themselves. Whenever I ask somebody critiquing it to pinpoint what's so heinous about it, it always comes back to what it evokes. It looks decent. Good shape design and interestingly sized proportions. It does what it sets out to. 6/10 I feel like its reputation is just the 'sellout' feeling rebranded as 'becoming corporate'.

Even if clip art is out of date, I still want to make my own free to use clipart someday when I have more time away from other projects.

As always, a brilliant deep dive! I started my design career in the mid-'90s in the newspaper world. Floppies and Zip Disks of sub-par clipart everywhere! What a time to be alive!

Ohhh that Art Parts stuff took me RIGHT back to the 90s, for real. I hadn't even realized that WAS clip art! It's such a distinct style, and it hadn't occurred to me how perfectly suited it was to the technology of the day, too. Great video over all, and thank you for this little revelation!

i'm so happy i discovered your channel. i find clip art and graphic design fascinating, and here are tons of videos on the subject!

Thanks for an interesting history of clip art. The Memphis style probably got its name from the Memphis style of furniture produced in the '80s by the Italian Memphis group, who made furniture with outrageous shapes and colors.

I think what puts people off with corporate memphis art style is that it creates the illusion of happiness and good intentions which is in stark contrast with what the big tech corporations are associated with. Also the weird proportions and skin colours make it uncanny, not quite human. E: lol, you basically said that (wrote the comment before) :D

One of my first jobs was converting raster images to vector drawings for a company that made coins and medals for corporate events. I would have about 15 minutes to convert a simple logo into perfect vector graphics using Coreldraw this was then sent to the tooling room where it was made into dies to stamp the coins.

Watched this video with my dad who worked as an illustrator at the des moines register late 80s til 2010s and did a ton of freelance work at dynamic graphics during that time. It was so brilliant to see you cover how his work flow changed with the changing technology. Such an impressive job well done. Took him a trip through memory lane 😚

Thanks for another interesting watch! Thanks for including the Ron and Joe clipart, I'd never seen it before.

Ah, Clip Art. I'd guess 90% of my non-essay school projects were done either in Publisher or PowerPoint and were filled with the stuff. The pervasiveness of free-to-use (or rather, bundled with a particular product) art files probably contributed to modern users just taking whatever images they want for their projects without thinking about copyright and such. It wasn't an issue before, now suddenly it is.

The cat urn made me tear up a little, it was nice to see that continuity but it reminded me a lot of my recent loss. Having such a loving tribute to a cat in a video about ClipArt was beautiful

This was an excellent and informative video. I honestly had no idea clip art even predated Office. Never felt the need to look into it at all, so it hadn't even occurred to me. Always nice to learn something new. Well presented too.

This is my new favourite channel! So glad to have stumbled upon your videos

onlineceramics clip art is the highest tier of art

Another great video... more of an nostalgic emotional rollercoaster than I expected. Also your subtle story arc/tribute to Mr Tibbles was very nicely done.

just discovered this channel. your editing is AMAZING!! keep up the great work!

excellent video. I paused it about a million times to read the old ad pages. great work, looking forward to going through the rest of this channel now :)

I remember seeing clipart on publisher 2003 at school and in all the resource documents. That was ten years ago man

I was surprised where you started as the earliest form of clip-art. I mean, yes in terms of the cutting out, but all I could think was stock print-blocks for printing presses, like manicules and edging decoration, which was re-used and re-used. I looked at a collection of old printing presses recently, and it was really interesting the number of full-on stock illustrations there were for things like newspaper publishing. They had a whole collection of different local company logos for advertising as well

I ran a magazine in the late '80s/early '90s and, although we had just transitioned to desktop publishing (Ventura Publisher on a PC 286 running MS-DOS, and reluctantly switched to Windows 3 when we added CorelDRAW! to our tools), we kept our subscription to physical clipart books for a long time. I nostalgically recognize a lot of the image styles that you shared in this entertaining and informative video. However, what I really want to comment on is the fact that you included a video clip of Klaymen from The Neverhood, my all-time favorite video game! Thank you for that!

This was a wonderful nostalgia trip, accurate, and extremely well narrated! +1 new subscriber!

AWESOME VIDEO AS ALWAYS, LINUS. Your video has made me feel guilty for not noticing that clip art was gone-ish, despite being something that I must've used all the time as a kid in the '90s. So many Powerpoints. Thank you for the trip down memory lane and your five million hours of research. Also, unintentional effect of watching your video is that I now cannot stop thinking about "The Neverhood" (I was totally obsessed with that game as a kid).

This was very great video you made Linus. Its very insightful and you do a great job to cover the different eras. Also your production value fits perfectly and its not even to long of a watch for such a long timeperiod.

Thank you for making this informative, yet nostalgic video!! I always liked a lot of clip art pictures, growing up in the 90's, and messing around with Broderbound Adobe Printshop, and Printshop Deluxe on our Windows 3.1 PC, lol. Also, just wanna say, that as a child of the 90's, I really love the retro feel of your video! The lo-fi, 90's instructional video feel of it made it quite pleasant to watch, and really fit the whole vibe of clip art nostalgia! Thank you!

Thanks for the memories. It was like watching a flashback of my career in advertising design for newspapers. I saw the transition from Clipart catalogs to Cds and finally to website providers. The quality varied a lot.

9:30 Flying Toasters screen saver - my favourite!!

Now I'd like to figure out how to get clip art back into modern versions of office. Great video!

I can still remember the lady who made the newsletter at the place my mom worked, in the 1980's who would physically "Cut and Paste (or scotch tape) graphics and text pieces onto the page and mail it to the printer's. I also did similar work in the early Aught's and remember when I had to switch from using the library of Generic Clip Art provided by Microsoft and having to browse for it online. Those were wild days, when left to my own devices... but there were also fewer copyrighted images. I really had nostalgia looking at those catalog pages with different file formats! Today the printing company I use to make my work newsletter, has a library of curated but royalty free images I can use, and there is an ample supply so I don't have to worry about browsing for images that might be copyrighted.

i think one difference between corporate memphis and older clip art was the variety and ambition of it older clip art used a wider variety of styles; it may not have tried to convey a message or spark an emotion, but it felt more creative in and of itself. corporate memphis is derivative, not due to genuine interest in an ongoing artistic trend, but rather just as an artistic cargo cult in both cases we end up surrounded by corporate art, but one at least shows a variety of human influences. the other is designed to be as far removed from the human experience as possible -- avoiding overrepresenting anyone by representing no one, abstracting away humanity and all its variety instead of embracing it, a tendency echoed by so many corporations' decision to use this one style -- to the point where it doesn't just feel like it's all by the same designer; it feels like it isn't by anyone at all the thing about "soulless art" is that a soul that isn't saying anything is still a soul. corporate memphis demands not merely that the artist be silent -- like nearly all clip art, no points to make; no deeper emotions to inspire -- but also that they be unseen; there can be no trace of a soul or its influence: originality is sacrificed for safety, configurability, reusability, and seamless replaceability -- including of the designers themselves i miss the old stuff. it was cheap and shallow and a little kitsch and gaudy and unsophisticated even as it aped sophistication -- and was all the more alive for it. corporations took art, took something that wasn't theirs, and wore it like a costume, parading it around everywhere -- which meant there was art everywhere; shallow but colorful. now, they've made it theirs, tamed it, showing it off with uncomprehending pride as it sits listlessly in its cage

Absolutely brilliant, love it. I learned so much about my field I feel dumb admitting it. Good art is always not in vogue with the corporations. You’ve given me a lot to re-assess.

I think 'do you hate the art, or what it stands for' is a contradictory question. The two aren't separable - the sign, and the signified. Conflating the 'low art' of amateur outsiders with corporate advertising, just because they both meet public backlash, is a mistake, because the opposition to them comes from completely opposite sides.

absolutely incredible video, and wrapped up so perfectly at the end. amazing work!!!

5:20 Love the hidden Jankman sticker! Always a sucker for designer lore