Clip Art as a hammer

Our corporate approved PowerPoint clip art contains a lot of useful objects, such as fat arrows, skinny arrows, curvy arrows, arrows that loop around in Sisyphean cycle. Here’s my favorite:Every time you want to show interlocking parts you have to show one center part and four satellite parts. ALWAYS. Never four parts together, or one center part and three satellite parts, no, ALWAYS the one in the middle and the four outside. Every time I see this I try to pick out which part was the bullshit part added in to complete the clip art.

Constraints and limits can do wonders to stimulate creativity (e.g. Merlin Mann’s Twitter feed). But even constraints have their limits. Corporate PowerPoint gives everyone a hammer to smash every idea.