The Shortlist Episode 67: Design Psychology

In AEC marketing, design makes in an impact on so many of our day-to-day marketing initiatives. Proposals, websites, social media, brochures, signage, email signatures, presentations—the list goes on and on. On top of that, each medium and message may utilize a whole host of visual elements such as color, layout, typography, form, space, imagery, and more. With so much design and so many applications, how can we make sure our deliverables are engaging and resonant? Enter design psychology.

On this episode of The Shortlist, Wendy Simmons talks with Middle of Six's Graphic Designers, Lauren Jane Peterson and Becky Ellison, to explore how design can inspire and influence emotion, perception, behavior, and experience. They discuss how the psychology of design can help us all make more informed decisions around details and aesthetics, explore different possibilities and approaches, and offer a few tips on how to be a more empathetic and effective designer.

CPSM CEU Credits: 0.5 | Domain: 1

Podcast Transcript

Welcome to The Shortlist.

We're exploring all things AEC marketing to help your firm win The Shortlist.

I'm Wendy Simmons, and today we're talking with Becky Ellison and Lauren-Jane Peterson to discuss the psychology of design and how it can influence the way we work and how your firm stands out in terms of messaging, perception, and engagement.

Hello, Lauren-Jane.

Hey, Becky.

Hi, thanks for having me.

Hey.

Thanks for being back on.

I always love our conversations.

It gets into the design side of our world and makes me reach way back into my mind about when I was doing design more often.

So I can't wait to learn from you both today.

So why don't we just get into a design psychology, the psychology behind design, or however we want to say that.

Why is this important?

Who thought of this topic?

And what do you plan on sharing with our listeners today?

So there's a lot of thought that goes into design choices, like color, typefaces, images, use of space, you know, etc.

Because those choices can influence how your audience feels about the content that you're presenting in less than a second.

You know, certain colors can evoke certain psychological and even physical responses.

Fonts can trigger memories and associations and like all sorts of things.

So it's important to consider how you present your information, because, you know, even just how it looks can convey just as much as what it says.

Bravo.

Great start.

So you're talking about all the visual stuff that we see and the emotional connection that a viewer, a user, the observer, the experience that they'll have from just looking at the content on the page or whatever you're designing.

The classic blue invokes trust, and red is powerful.

And green means money.

I could go on forever.

Or does it?

Or is it?

Yeah, we're definitely going to get into that.

All right.

Well, since I started us on the color theory topic, what are those psychological implications of color choice and the combinations?

And how do you use that?

Where do you bring that in when you're making design decisions?

Well, I'm tempted to pull up an example from just this week.

I've been working with a new client on branding.

We've been talking about color palette.

And one of the issues that keeps coming up is whether a certain color or combination of colors is feminine versus masculine versus tough enough for the construction industry, that sort of thing.

And it's interesting because we're not looking at pink versus blue or whatever.

These are just shades of turquoise, I want to say, teal.

And we're wondering, is this too light to be?

And that really got me thinking because I think we as a society have definitely shifted a little bit away from the sort of pink is female and blue is male and whatever way of thinking.

But I think in the industry it's an immediate gut response.

Like, what does this color mean?

And I thought, man, if that's that powerful, just sitting here in this meeting and somebody's taking a look at a color for half a second, what does that say about the implications of that in all of our work?

So yeah, something even as small as choosing a particular color can influence somebody's entire perception of what you've put in front of them.

There's a lot of differences within just cultures of the world in terms of like, what does one color mean?

What does another color mean?

I think generally, here in the United States of America, from which we are broadcasting, red is an angry color.

It's a sexy color.

It's fiery.

It's powerful.

It's aggressive.

In China, for example, red is the color of good fortune.

It's a ceremonial color.

It's less, seen as less aggressive.

It's lucky.

So that's just one example of how this question can't really be definitively answered, because it's going to be different for a lot of people.

I will also add, not only do we consider the psychology of the color, but then you also have to compare that to the market and other people that are existing in the space with those colors.

So this isn't exactly psychology.

Maybe it could be.

But you also have to think, how does your color look compared to the other people in your space and your competitors' colors?

So throw that in on top of all the psychology that Becky just mentioned.

That is what came to mind immediately when Becky was sharing her branding case study there.

You know, just a quick snippet thinking, Lauren Jane, about your current branding case study and how, you know, someone working in a certain space, they are over their current color.

They don't want to see it anymore.

And they also don't want to take on the colors of all of their competition.

So they start off the project with some strong preferences.

And sometimes we do this not with 100% consistency, but there is something to doing some initial logo work in black and white because you're taking color out of the discussion.

And then sometimes it's important to be looking at color at the start.

So I don't know, do either of you have any preferences for working in black and white when you're doing branding work?

Yes, very.

I very much like to start with black and white or gray and white or whatever, one color at least, because I fall into the very deep ravine of using color too soon and then getting married to it and then everything looks weird once you start changing colors.

And I did that recently and I'm just mentally kicking myself right now because I did start with a varied color palette with a design project and I shouldn't have.

I should have stuck to black and white in the beginning.

But it's also good to do that because not only are you not getting married to your color palette, but you're able to design something that works in one color.

It works in black and white.

You can make sure that it'll work when it's outlined that'll work against a dark surface, a light surface.

You're not depending on your colors to show what it is that you've designed.

In people's preferences, they may, I don't know, say they don't like red or brown or whatever color you might be representing it.

They may rule out the strongest option just because it's on their computer screen.

It looked a little too mauve.

I don't know whatever that might be.

And so, yeah, you don't want to lose any great, brilliant ideas based on a quick judgment color, which we see a lot.

Yeah.

And when I'm doing the identity design for a clan, I always ask, you know, what color do you hate?

What can you absolutely not stand so we can make sure, you know, and then, you know, what do you like?

But I think it's more important to know what they hate.

We can't, we absolutely cannot do orange.

If you put orange in there, we're done.

Like, that's the kind of stuff you have to know before you put pen to paper.

Yeah.

If you start, this isn't a logo design conversation, but thinking about color and black and white versus color, if you start with the most constrained version of the logo that you'll need, you can always expand.

And a trap that some people can fall into is designing their logo in color and then realizing if they need it in a single color.

You know, maybe it's like a three-color logo and there isn't enough value or enough contrast between the values of certain colors, so it doesn't work in a single color in black and white.

So, you know, I always recommend starting with that most constrained black or even a mid-value gray.

Sometimes black can feel really hard and harsh.

So even working with like a kind of saturated mid-value gray can be a nice option.

Any other thoughts about color before we move on to typefaces, which is a huge topic?

Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of science behind this, which is fascinating.

If you, the listener, are not completely up on the science of color psychology, the history here is way back in the day.

I was surprised to read this.

So there was a prominent German neuropsychologist called Kurt Goldstein, and he did an experiment with patients who were experiencing central nervous system disorders.

And he wondered if looking at certain colors would physically affect them.

So he did an experiment where he had him look at red things, and then he had him look at green things, and observed if that had any impact on their symptoms.

And apparently, looking at red increased their physical symptoms, whereas looking at green seemed to decrease them.

And that sort of set the psychology field off, saying, hey, maybe there is something going on here with colors.

So people have been researching this for a bazillion years, and some scientific findings have come up in terms of things like looking at the color blue is sort of proven to make you feel calm.

It's proven to reduce appetite.

Looking at the color orange is proven to increase hunger, which is why so many fast food restaurants have those orange, red, and orange logos.

That makes you, it literally makes you want to eat.

So we do have these kind of very concrete scientific, clinically proven reactions to colors, as well as just the sort of cultural associations.

We wear black to a funeral.

It's a very somber color.

But again, I would remind you, in Japan, let's say they wear white to a funeral.

You never know where you are in the world, what the perception is going to be.

But another interesting discussion might be chicken and the egg.

Do we see the color blue as trustworthy because we've seen it associated so many times with trustworthy organizations?

Does that reinforce itself the more that it's used?

If you broke out of the mold, if you branded a bank in pink and yellow, is that going to change the public perception?

I don't know, but we're maybe getting a bit of head of ourselves here in the AEC industry.

But yeah, so in our industry, what do we have?

We have safety, high vis orange and green, right?

That's going to evoke people in the field wearing their vests and t-shirts that you can see from a mile away.

I mean, green is used to evoke sustainability, the environment.

I mean, blue is associated with health care.

I was working on a proposal for a company whose main color was red, and I was using that to brand the proposal.

It was a proposal for a hospital job, and I used a lot of red all through it.

And then the client was like, we got it.

We can't use this red because red for hospitals is associated with, you know, red alert, emergency code.

You know, we can't do that.

Code red, blood.

And that was a good reminder.

I mean, they're not used to seeing that in association with hospital imagery, so we had to kind of pivot there.

Well, I hear out of this quick conversation, know your audience.

We could say that about everything every time, but know your audience.

If you are presenting internationally, you better know what the color invokes in those circles, but even locally or within your industry, kind of understand that.

And maybe you can use that to your benefit if you need to differentiate a little bit.

Pulling out a color that isn't typically thought of in that industry, but that still works could be a good way.

And then also spending some time knowing your client or your specific, if you're working internally, of course, it might be a little bit easier to know yourself, but understanding what the preferences are, what do you like.

We do a color exercise that gives three variations on color palettes, and we always say none of these are the colors we're going to use, but which ones do you gravitate towards?

And it gives people the opportunity to say, I like these a bit better, or argue and arm wrestle over which one they're going to decide on.

And then the other thing, start your design in black and white, especially when it's a very color sensitive subject.

I don't know if that's the right way to describe it, but I'm thinking about a logo or other things where the color might influence the final decision, and that's not exactly where you want to start off.

All right, typography, typefaces.

People have preferences.

We just heard one today in an earlier meeting.

It's amazing how typefaces can evoke a time period, a style, a professionalism, all of these different things.

No one wants to use comic sans anymore, right?

Because I got such a bad name, it can't even be used, or hardly in a joke.

So, you know, what do you want to share related to how typefaces influence perception?

With our basic, large typeface categories, we have things like serifed typefaces, slab serifed typefaces, slab typefaces, non-serifed, and then you have things like script and display faces.

And they all give slightly different feels.

And of course, that is the most rudimentary breakdown of typefaces out there.

But when we look at typefaces in the category, like serif, you know, they have the little tails at the tops and the bottoms, right?

And that tends to feel a little bit more traditional, a little bit more formal.

We think back to typewriters, right?

Or even lead set type.

The serifs were there to help kind of anchor the letters and make them legible at really small sizes.

And there was a big swing when, I don't know, modern design started happening, I would say, 20 years ago, in the last 20, 15 years, where nobody was really using serif to type anymore.

It was only used exclusively for things like small body copy, like in books, or legal documents, or long-form narrative, right?

And mostly what we were seeing, especially in the design world, was sans serif typefaces.

It was clean, it was seen as very modern, and there weren't extra flourishes, like the tails on the feet, like exactly what a serif is.

And that can feel, again, modern, simple, clean, nothing extra, really paying attention to efficiency, right?

Sans serif typefaces can feel like that.

We are seeing a little bit of a swing, just from a design and culture and trend perspective, like everything else, it swings one way and the other.

But then we look at things like slab typefaces or slab serif typefaces, which are really heavy, and they can feel almost like columnar.

And when we think of carving stone type into marble or into a building, that's pretty strong and heavy.

So all those things evoke different feelings as we look at the types.

So all in all, to say font selection really varies, and even, of course, amongst those categories, there's a huge difference in vibe.

And it's a little bit of a running joke amongst designers, is like, I'll never pick the perfect typeface.

Just keep looking, because each one has such a different feeling to it.

But overall, those are the big categories.

You know, a couple other things to mention, notable mentions, are the weight of the typeface.

You know, if you have something really thin, really thin strokes and lines that can feel a little bit airy, it can feel a little delicate, it's not yelling at you, versus the opposite end of the spectrum when you have something really bold, that extra bold, that black selection from that typeface that feels really heavy and can almost feel like it's yelling at you, as well as if you put something on all caps, that scene is yelling.

So selecting those carefully, you can have an all caps, but maybe it's smaller and not too bold, right?

You're just making sure that you have some balance in the selections, so it's not too in your face or too delicate on the flip side.

Becky, do you want to touch on some of the historical connections?

Yeah.

I mean, just in terms of, again, cultural associations, a font can really set the mood of the content that you're presenting.

I mean, people have strong emotional connections to typography.

They might remember the font that was used for a particular TV show's titles or a ubiquitous ad campaign that everybody saw.

I mean, they might have typed all their high school reports in Verdana.

Look at Wes Anderson.

He's a great example, a filmmaker.

He uses Futura like it's a character in the film.

His stuff is an incredible example of the power of typography to create a mood, to create a world.

He works with a graphic designer called Annie Atkins, who creates all those custom signs and letters and paper crafts and all the stuff.

It's absolutely essential to the whole cinematography picture because you're getting all these little details that can create.

It creates a time you know exactly where you are, you know exactly when you are.

I mean, it just like it's it just jumps off the screen.

So I mean, you can see that these these little choices can really have the power to show, you know, what it is you're doing.

Again, cultural associations, maybe maybe not as intercultural here, but like, yeah, the thinner fonts, they they tend that they feel sharper, they feel more kind of confrontational.

It's very like we're we're modern, we're ahead of it.

We're in the future.

We're trustworthy.

No extra baggage, thin, sharp, sans serif.

Bam, right in your face.

Or you've got like, you know, the big, bold like, listen to us.

We know what we're talking about.

These these letters are big and large, and you can't miss them.

And you feel the same way about us.

I think maybe even overuse of like italics and underlined decoration that that that sets.

I mean, a perception, I think, too, like we're we're tuning things.

We're we're different.

We're standing out.

You know, I mean, there's there's many different things to think about there.

But you you're definitely like, you know, Lauren Jane's right, like you can look for a bazillion, bazillion years and find a million different typefaces that are all, you know, very similar or wildly different, you know.

But again, I want to I always say this, I think, but like you want you want your type to be readable.

For the love of God, I mean, like, yes, you know, take take chances with design on like headers and call outs and whatever.

But like for your body copy, like don't reinvent the wheel for your body copy.

We go with clean, simple, and readable every time.

This turned into a soapbox preaching moment, but I'm passionate about readability, folks.

Yeah.

I was just going to say that I've sat in many branding discussions with clients, and I'm going to go out on limb here and say, I feel like we can get to the color decision a lot faster than we can get to the typography decision, especially when it has to do with if we're considering what's going in their logo.

I think go round and around, so there's a lot of opinions about that.

I don't know.

Do you all agree, or am I just kind of imagining away the struggles with color?

I agree 100 percent.

No, I think that's true.

I think we can settle on blue or something, but man, the fonts can go forever.

I want to give a little tip or a shout out to a tool that I use often, which is fontsinuse.com.

If anyone else on the call is familiar with that.

But I love looking up the typeface that I'm potentially using and seeing the vibe of how other designers have used it.

And you can also see the different types that are paired together.

It's just a really great tool to actually just look up the typeface that you're using and see it in use.

So I want to throw that out there.

Nice.

fontsinuse.com, right?

Yep.

Awesome.

Hot tip.

All right, Becky, what are your hot tips?

That is a great hot tip.

I would say take photos of things in real life.

Walk down the street, and if you see a sign or something, snap a picture, save it for later.

If you see something interesting on the TV, take a quick photo, and make yourself a little scrapboard and see what are these fonts that are being used and how do I feel about this.

Look at a restaurant menu, look at just unexpected places.

Look at something boring.

I would say look at the phone book, but I'm dating myself.

Find something that's like not exciting, and look at that type, and just see how does this make me feel?

You know, anytime you see type in the wild, you know, that's an opportunity to assess.

What are they trying to say with this?

What does this do for me?

What does this make me want to do in relation to their product, et cetera?

A lot of font in the wild that I see is that they're using four different fonts on a menu, and it drives me nuts.

But you know how that goes.

I was like, oh, write it in, delete at least one of these.

But I hear you that there can be, there can be great design even in the stuff that maybe isn't the expected great design places.

And then of course, that you can walk into an art museum and then see the most elegant version of typography you could ever wish for.

Well, then what if we move along to how photography and visual imagery can change perceptions and how you make decisions on best use of that in someone's brand or in a proposal or however you want to use photography?

Well, you do want to think about setting a mood with photography.

We often help clients with their brand photography, photographing their people, doing stuff, photographing workers on the job site, photographing not necessarily projects as much, but you think you got to have the conversation to begin with.

When people look at this image, what are they immediately going to think about our brand, about us, about our people?

And we will sometimes have them set guidelines.

We want to make sure people are always facing the camera.

We want to make sure people are not facing the camera.

We want to make sure that there is more than one person in any particular area of the photograph.

We want to frame it such that there's space.

There's so many things to think about before you start taking those pictures.

You want to think about lighting.

Is your brand personality light, bright?

Do you want to use light colors?

Do you want to use colors that are seen as optimistic?

And even we ourselves will have our people wear certain colors to make sure that we match the color palette, the brand aesthetic that we're going for.

You definitely want to make sure that you're portraying an image of what it is that you're talking about.

So, I mean, if you're saying that your company is all about safety, it's all we care about, I mean, please, please make sure that whatever is in your photos reflects that, you know?

Because, again, broken down to its most essential element, I mean, an image, a photo is there to convey much more than you can quickly say with text.

You know, a picture is worth a thousand words, right?

And it's quick.

So you want to put as much meaning as you can into that quick one second look.

Yeah, I'll say, what is the emotional connection that you can build or tie with the photographs that you insert into whatever you're working on or the photographs that you use?

Sometimes we have to use project photos, and maybe it's a project photo that just shows something, and there isn't a huge opportunity for that, but where else can you find an opportunity for that?

Maybe it's on a tab, right, or on a cover, or on a sidebar somewhere.

Where can you build a tie, an emotional connection?

How can you build rapport with the audience?

Who's going to be viewing this?

You know, of course, I was just giving a proposal example, but this could also work.

Website, brochure, et cetera.

Think about who's going to be looking at it.

Think about what maybe they want to see or how they could see themselves in the photo, their children or their colleagues or parents, right?

And then moreover, what's the story that you're telling?

How can you build a connection, tell a story, and give a good impression?

And then I suppose I'll wrap it up by saying, like Becky mentioned, what's the consistency in terms of the internal brand styling?

How can you, on top of all of those things, create a consistent look where, you know, let's say someone looks at our stuff and says, wow, that's like obviously Middle of Six.

That's a Middle of Six brand shoot.

That feels like them.

You know, what can you do to put your face and your mark on it without putting, literally putting your name on it?

I love that you ended with that story because I was going to ask, you know, if you were managing the photography assets at your firm and you want to have a really strong, strong cohesion with your brand photography, but you're getting photos from cell phones and professional photographers and maybe photographers across the country.

You know, you don't have the luxury of just using one photographer all the time.

Do you have any suggestions on continuing the brand personality thread through all those different images?

Yeah, there's a few things that you can do.

Sometimes you get photos or you have to work with photos that you've inherited, right, or that already exist.

So that's kind of a separate problem that I'll touch on in just a second.

But moving forward, you can create standards, right?

And you can put as much work as you can in place in hopes that other people will pay attention to it and adhere by that.

But that might be any kinds of guidelines around the way that the photo is set up.

Everybody has different thoughts on what looks good in a picture.

So creating a set of standards is great and very important.

And then the second thing I would say is to work with what you already have and or if some things come in and you just honestly didn't have control over it.

I think you can create some sort of system that identifies it as your photo.

So whether that be a color overlay on top of your photos or a filter that really brightens things up, you can create consistency there.

There are always some tweaks.

If you have a little bit of time, you can create some consistency.

Pop into Lightroom, have a preset that you put on things, and even the little tweaks like that can make a big difference.

Becky, do you have anything you want to share related to the graphics, images, and decisions you're making when doing some design work?

Yeah, a lot of times decisions we make in layout design particularly are based on what are we doing?

What did we do 20 years ago?

What's dated?

What's not?

Has this been done?

Does this make me think of something old?

And things tend to go around and around and around.

So to that end, 15 years ago, let's say it was very fashionable, skeuomorphism was the thing.

It was making flat 2D digital things look like they were 3D real things.

Things actually etched into wood, actual pieces of paper taped to, that sort of thing.

And then that went so fast out of fashion, it became hated.

So then we've shifted to flat design, which was very minimal.

No shadows, no 3D, nothing.

It was just shapes and flat and okay.

And then we started calling that, that was like Web 2.0 and whatever.

We had the little bubbles and the shiny things.

And we go through these phases in design.

So in layout design, we see a lot of things like, let's look at the org chart.

We've had rounded corners.

Oh my God.

That's something so small can bring up such strong emotions.

Some people absolutely cannot stand it.

Other people's got to have it.

But if you look at that, what does that say?

Rounded corners, I'm tempted to say that seems friendly.

It seems soft, easy, approachable.

It's not scary.

It's not aggressive.

But I wouldn't necessarily say that rectangular corners are aggressive.

I think it's just kind of because we see boxes and squares and corners all the time.

So again, you got to look at your internal culture and the people who are making these decisions and kind of say like, again, how does this make me fail?

Some people don't like dotted lines.

Some people have got to have a certain line weight.

It's interesting how very emotionally connected we are to what seems like these tiny little details, but they do matter.

So if you get your reader looking at the right combination of, I hate rounded corners, I can't stand dotted lines, I hate the color blue, and you give them all those things, I mean, you could be unwittingly influencing them to be rooting against you.

The question that comes up from that, obviously, is how do we make sure not to do that?

And I would say no one person can tell you if somebody tells you they do know the secret to that, they are for sure selling something and not correct.

But I would say, just generally, as a designer, I have always advised to go with the most minimal thing you can.

Meaning, for example, look at the way that home appliances were designed in the 70s, let's say.

You had those brown and orange and teal and wacky colors and who boy, and that looked so dated so quickly because it was very unusual, it was very ostentatious, look at all this stuff.

Versus, if you design things that are like nature colors that are metal, silver, gray, black, white, those things tend to last longer in terms of what's acceptable in the design aesthetic of the cultural zeitgeist.

So basically, I would say, stick to minimal and then add your colors here and there and whatever, but don't do everything at once.

That's what I'm saying.

Don't do the vegetable soup with every possible thing.

Just go with something simple and then add in little pops to keep it timeless.

And it's okay to remember that your designs don't have to last forever.

I mean, it's great if you get something that's going to live for 100 years and be held on a pedestal of the best design proposal ever created.

But there's space for everything along that spectrum of a party invitation that's a one-hit, really fun kind of creative place to be, explore the design and how far you can go within the brand, and to something that needs to be much more timeless.

What's the signage on the outside of the building looking like and that sort of thing.

So there's room for both.

But I think, Becky, you're right on about minimalist is going to equal more timeless.

Well, awesome conversation.

I'm gonna put you two on the spot here.

So while I wrap this part up, I want you to think about what's your top tip based on what we talked about today.

So you get a whole 20 seconds while I kind of put this together.

My tip, and we didn't go into this in any detail, but I would say if you're thinking about people's preferences, preconceived notions around design, can't ignore the option of having a small focus group, whether that's your co-workers that you're bouncing something off of to get their perspective on, and they may shed some light into something that you had overlooked, or if you're launching a larger brand or a campaign, actually having a focus group, building in time to get some outside feedback without creating design by committee.

That's what I would recommend.

That's the best way to see what other people think.

And don't worry about pleasing everyone, but we just don't want to step into some real obvious holes along the way.

So I don't know.

There's my tip on design psychology.

That's a good tip.

I would say my tip is get to know yourself, get to know your preferences.

Again, go out and take pictures of things that you see, colors that you see, fonts that you see, signs, menus, documents, commercials on television, anything that has been designed.

Take a little picture of it and think to yourself, how does this make me feel?

What are they trying to say?

What are they selling?

What do they want me to do?

And then doing that for a while, that exercise, you'll kind of get to know how do I feel about these things and why.

And you can kind of get inside the head of other designers who are using design to influence your psychology, and that will make you kind of more able to think, hmm, what are the choices that I could make that would likely convey X, Y, Z to whoever is looking at your stuff?

I stand by fontsinuse.com.

Best tip ever.

Do we have a coupon code or?

No, but sometimes we can get lost in Pinterest land if we're trying to find inspiration, and I'm gonna say I don't find the best stuff in Pinterest all the time.

So how can you vary your resources and your inspiration?

I think maybe that's actually the biggest tip is zooming out a little bit, getting outside of your typical go-to for inspiration sources, and essentially what Becky was saying, right?

Like zoom out, find other sources, go to fontsinuse.com.

We're not sponsored, but you can sponsor us.

Nice.

Yeah, zoom out.

Yeah.

Well, those are all great tips, and I appreciate you bringing up this topic.

There's a lot of directions we could have gone, but this is a great overview of these areas that most impact our design decisions every day.

So thanks for sharing, and I can't wait to be back on the podcast with both of you later.

Same.

Thanks, guys.

Thank you.

Likewise.

Thanks.

The Shortlist is presented by Middle of Six.

Our producer is Kyle Davis, with digital marketing support by the team at Middle of Six.

If you're looking for past episodes or more info, check out our podcast page at middleofsix.com/theshortlist.

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Until next time, keep on hustling, bye.

The Shortlist is a podcast that explores all things AEC marketing. Hosted by Middle of Six Principal, Wendy Simmons, each episode features members of the MOS team, where we take a deep dive on a wide range of topics related to AEC marketing including: proposal development, strategy, team building, business development, branding, digital marketing, and more. You can listen to our full archive of episodes here.