Clip Art, the best known archive for quick images, has suffered a graphic demise. He will no longer grace new Microsoft Office programs. He was the most famous of the picture albums that could be quickly be used for powerpoints, papers and later ecards. This led him to be known as the savior of the procrastinator, the minimalist, and the lazy.

Microsoft has said that users will still be able to add images by uploading them from personal devices, OneDrive, and SharePoint. But nothing will compare to Clip Art’s elegantly cheesy and pleasing simple galleries.

Clip Art was born in 1996 with Word 6.0. From his birth to his death, he evolved from a gallery of 82 pictures to 140,000 plus images and gifs. He provided free service compared to other subscription-based galleries that were prevalent at his rise, peaking in the early 2000’s.

Microsoft has chosen Bing’s image search for non trademarked pictures as Clip Art’s successor. Microsoft claims this will have no real impact in how a user will search and places images. But many will sigh that they are forced to use a second-rate Google to find such simple images.

But there is hope for those who can not live without the cartoonish and simplistic images that Clip Art worked so hard to be made famous. His greatest works shall be preserved and popular images will be still easy to find and use.

He was 17 years old, an age that seems almost ancient in an industry that overhauls its software nearly every two or three years. Clip Art leaves behind tens of thousands of images, legions of fans and a generation of users.