Hacker News Reader

"First, programmers don't often have a lot of taste. The fonts [in Excel and Powerpoint] are flaccid, the defaults are wan and uninspiring. There's no sophistication."

The programmers working on the latest version of Excel are about as likely to choose the fonts as they are to design the advertising campaign for it.

View on HN

Godin didn't mean "programmers", he did mean "corporate drones". But that's his target audience. So he writes "programmers" to give his audience somebody to distinguish themselves a bit, like "if you make awesome presentations you are not so un-hip like those".

"Godin didn't mean "programmers", he did mean "corporate drones"."

Well, I think you're giving him too much credit, I took his words at face value and I think that he meant exactly what he said.

If you're right, though, what exactly is his point? That you should draw your graphs by hand? Use an unpopular spreadsheet? That you should change the font etc. from the default, which is a deliberately safe choice? What makes him think that a 'marketer' can produce a more appealing graph than a 'corporate drone' graphic designer?

"If you're right, though, what exactly is his point?"

How does the overall point of the paragraph / article change when we change the job title of the people who create the templates?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com