![]() Even more than his design, it's who he is. Anybody can draw him or make him up or copy him. You don't have a whole lot to work with: Just a wire and a couple of eyes and some eyebrows. Initially, though, I was embarrassed to put him in my portfolio.ĭo you think there's something about Clippy's shape, or the design principles involved, that make it easy to reproduce? He was so pervasive everywhere, it worked in my favor. I realized it didn't matter that people hated him, if people knew who he was. I said, "I designed that guy." And she goes "Oh my god, you did?" and got really excited. One time I was in a client's office and she was working in Word, and Clippy came up. ![]() When I say I'm the guy that designed Clippy, it's, "Oh yeah come on in, let's talk." When I first designed Clippy-after I designed him and left the project-I didn't put him in my portfolio or resume, because I knew how people reacted to him. And you know what, Clippy has opened a million doors for me. The fame and the glory is all you're getting at this point. ![]() I was paid nicely and fairly at the time…. A penny for every computer that's on, I'd be set for life. People tell me when you're on the Microsoft campus, Clippy t-shirts are still one of the hot sellers in their stores.ĭo you get royalties for all of that stuff? They animated Clippy and used him in online ads, and there were flash games where you could shoot rubber bands at him as he went across the screen. Even Microsoft, when Windows XP came out, they used Clippy in promotions, and called it the Ex-Paperclip version of Windows. To me, like I said, as long as people know who he is and make fun of him, I've got cachet. What do you think of all the different ways people have made this character their own? No matter which character became the default character, they'd be doing the same things, and they would probably be hated. But the reason I think people hate him is not because of what Clippy is, but how Clippy acts. How the developers and programmers chose to make him act or react? I have no claim to that. What is so endearingly hateable about this character? The fact that people despise him or hold him in disdain is probably what keeps him in the forefront of our memory. That he's still part of our culture, even though he hasn't been an active part of our culture, even though he hasn't been part of the software in decades. The fact that people know who he is is the important thing to me. In fact, I designed Clippy on a Mac.īut you know, I am not put off by people hating him. I didn't really experience it myself, because I'm a Mac guy. As much as people hate Clippy, when I meet, they say, "Oh god I HATED THAT! That's so cool!" But I totally understand the annoyance factor there. At one point he was annoying hundreds of millions of people a day, which was kind of funny. Even some of the responses on Twitter you can see with the pregnant Clippy, there are some people that want to bring him back. I get a dozen pieces of fan mail from people that just loved Clippy. But to be honest, not everybody hates him. They fucking hate him! And you know what, that's fine. It's interesting that the psychologists found that Clippy was the most endearing, because people fucking hate Clippy. For instance, typing an address followed by "Dear" would cause Clippy to pop up with and a variety of pre-determined messages, including "Hey! It looks like you're writing a letter!" before offering to help walk you through the process."They fucking hate him! And you know what, that's fine. Atteberry to serve as a user-friendly troubleshooter for people using Office applications including Word and Excel. Due to its impractical and intrusive nature, Clippy quickly became a subject of mockery among Office users, inspiring a series of satirical images and parodies addressing its overall incompetence as a program.Ĭlippy, a paperclip with googly eyes and expressive eyebrows, was designed by Kevan J. Clippit, better known as Clippy, is the default animated character in the English Windows version of Microsoft Office Assistant, an interactive user's guide that came pre-installed with Microsoft Office bundles from 1997–2003.
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