FRIDAY FUNNY: Elevating Excel To An Art Form

Posted by Heidi Schwartz

While everyone in the workplace is fairly familiar with Microsoft Excel, Tatsuo Horiuchi’s name may not be so well known. His relative anonymity may soon be over.

Take a look at his work, which has been featured in exhibitions:

Yes, they’re beautiful, but what’s the big deal?

These works have been created in Excel. Yes, Excel.

The 73-year-old never used the program during his professional life, but after he retired, he decided to play around with the program to see how it could be adapted for graphic design purposes. Instead of spreadsheets, the program has been transformed by Horiuchi into an amazing palette of colors, shapes, and images.

According to Brian Ashcraft of Kotaku, the artist found the program easy to use and more capable than actual paint. And when asked by the Japanese website PC Online why he uses Excel, Horiuchi was very matter of fact with his explanation. “Other specialized graphic software is expensive,” he says, “and Excel came pre-installed in PCs.”

The next time you look at an Excel file, just think of these gorgeous images and think about what you may do when you retire.