The Shortlist Episode 99: The Short(er) List: How to Get the Most out of Microsoft

Not every client or firm lives in InDesign. And sometimes, for whatever reason, you're not able to use the Adobe Creative Suite programs, but still have to produce a presentable product. It may not be ideal, but it's going to be okay.

In this episode of The Short(er) List, Becky sits down with Grace Takehara to talk about a reality every AEC designer eventually faces: the dreaded Word doc, the pesky PowerPoint deck, or the well-intentioned Canva link. How do we make the most of these tools and create something polished and professional? We have ideas.

Becky and Grace dig into how to make the Microsoft and non-Adobe programs work harder than they're given credit for, how to overcome technical limitations, and how to keep your design standards intact even when the software is fighting you the whole way.

This one's for every designer who's ever opened a proposal in Word or presentation in PowerPoint and felt their soul leave their body—and who made their peace, made it work, and lived to tell the tale.

Podcast Transcript

Welcome to the ShorterList! Hi, I'm Becky Ellison from the ShorterList podcast and I am going rogue because apparently some things are just too silly, weird, or extra to fit into our regular ShorterList episodes, so we are bringing those conversations and rants and other fun stuff that was too spicy for TV direct to you in bite-sized little podcast treats hosted by me and featuring all of your favorite middle of sixers. Joining me today is Grace Takehara, one of my favorite middle of sixers, and I also stole our producer Kyle Davis, too. You know him.

Hey, Grace. Hey, Kyle. What up? Kyle never talks, but he's, oh, what's that? He's mouthing the words, Becky, you're the coolest person I've ever met.

Wow, Kyle, that's so nice of you. He's such a nice guy. That's so nice.

Grace. Grace, how are you doing? Vibe check. How are things? How are you? What are you working on right now? Oh, hi.

Hello, Becky. Well, all of the things like a true marketer, we're doing part proposal, part social media content. Wow.

Part anniversary campaigning. Impressive. Part all of it.

So lots on the plate, but really looking forward to talking about the topic today. The topic. We're so, this is such a, we've built this up so much, but you're going to gasp listeners when you hear it.

This is by far the scariest episode of the shorter list we have ever recorded in our very short history. We're talking about a topic that with the mere mention of its name will strike fear into the hearts of every graphic designer and marketing person who hears it. But you know what? We are fearless.

We are going to drive head on into the storm because today we are going to talk about how to beat Microsoft applications like PowerPoint, Word, et cetera, into submission and make things look as nice as they can. What else is there? Publisher that that's an old one. Grace, have you ever even used publisher? Have you ever seen it? Grace is a bit younger than me.

So maybe, maybe, maybe not. Do you know publisher? It feels like a legend or, you know, some sort of I've heard of it. I've heard it uttered.

I've heard of back in the day publisher, but I have been purely in the in design world, which sounds like a good thing in my professional career. Yes. Progress marches on.

That's, that's good. We, we want every generation to have it a little bit better than we had it. I remember when people were trying to make things in publisher and who boy, I, it was a lot of, you know, company newsletters and that sort of thing.

And it was, it was just like, I don't know, like PowerPoint is so hard to design and word is like a nightmare, but like somehow publisher was like even worse. Oh Lord. It was.

Yeah. It's hard. So like anyone out there, if you even still encounter publisher, like fight, fight hard, use all of your resources, tell them it's time to end that.

I don't know if it even exists as an app anymore, but if you see it, kill it. So, so Grace, you, you do a lot of, you work in a lot of very different programs. Cause like you're, you're always working on like stuff for social media and you do proposals and like just all kinds of stuff.

So you, you are a very adaptable, you're an octopus as we would say in the world of the marketers, obviously, as we all know. Yes. Um, what have been some like challenges that you've had working with Microsoft applications? I mean, the lack of control that you could have in those programs, which it makes sense.

They're meant, meant to be used across a variety of, you know, different softwares and all of that. It's just hard to make it just right. The design that you have in your mind, there's just limitations with that.

So it can be just margins being out of whack when you're like, Oh man, I thought I had it this way. And then I did something where the whole view is just off. And also it's just, you have limitations compared to when you're in InDesign, you can design in it with, you know, the pen tool.

And we would like to use that for illustrator, but you can use, you know, create things within InDesign that you can't in PowerPoint or word. And so it can feel limiting in that way, but I get why agencies or certain clients do it. It can be a really friendly template for them when they're reviewing.

And also in theory, it can be a template where they're like, we're trying to make these submitters lives easier, you know, by templatizing it. But, you know, it can be an ache for people that are like, Oh, I want more design control. I want to put my brand more into this, into this document that we're submitting to a client.

So yeah, I think that you can feel limited in Microsoft. That's very diplomatic of you. Great.

You're, you're, you're defending Microsoft. Microsoft is the enemy of good design. We all know it.

Uh, we have sort of a problem here. Yeah. You apparently didn't put one of the new cover sheets on your TPS reports.

Oh yeah. I'm sorry about that. I, I forgot.

Yeah. You see, we're putting the cover sheets on all TPS reports now before they go out.

Did you see the memo about this? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I have the memo right here.

I just forgot. I know. I get it.

Like if, if that's all you use and you've never experienced in design, of course you think like, this is easy. We all have it. Everyone can use it.

But then you, you move one thing and it just like creates three new pages that weren't even there. You can't control the pages. It's wild.

As, as a designer who is aware of InDesign and Illustrator, I, I can't imagine why anyone would want to make something in, in Word or PowerPoint or whatever that wasn't just like super simple, but it seems like there's always like requests for like, let's do an entire proposal in Word, for example, which I know you have done. Like what's how, how do you even make that happen? Like without like burning the building down with yourself in it? Well, you know, I can do it one even better. And I've had proposals that have been due in an Excel file, which is a nightmare.

But I, I think it's just embracing that there are limitations with using Microsoft versus the like world that you can create an InDesigner using an Adobe product. It's world building. Well said.

It is world building. Yes. But I think that there's some things that you can keep in mind that keep maybe the designer in you a little bit more satisfied.

It's like, get back to the basics. I think that Microsoft does basics well. So it's like, all right, can we at least have our brand colors in here? Can we at least use, hopefully some of our brand fonts, even though Microsoft and Adobe don't always talk nicely to each other with fonts? And are there any graphics that we have that live outside Microsoft that we could, you know, export as an image and bring into this document that we couldn't create, within Word? So I think that there's ways, again, that you can bring some of your favorite graphics or brand elements and adapt it to Word to make it feel somewhat satisfying, maybe not fully satisfying, but somewhat.

Embrace limitations. I love that. That is the Microsoft slogan.

Yes. It feels very architectural or engineering to be like, embrace the challenge. What's the challenge is an opportunity, right? It could be.

Yeah. Do you like, what are some tips and tricks to like, kind of make it, to make it do what you want to do? Which is like, honestly, you know, anyone who's listened to my like, InDesign tips will know that like, I'm very anti just, just make it work. Like, I mean, unless you're desperate, like when you, you think like, okay, I'll figure this out and just mash some stuff together.

Like, I think it's important to do it the right way, you know, all that sort of thing. But honestly, with like Word, PowerPoint, whatever, you just got to make it work, man. There's not time to like, figure out how to like, set it up for success.

There is no success. Sorry. I'm filled with emotions about Microsoft.

I'm currently working on designing a PowerPoint template for a client right now, who has excellent design taste and deserves a high quality product. And oh, my God, is it like, absolutely, just it's just peeling my skin off trying to get these things to work and make it look halfway decent. And so yeah, give us hit us with some like, tips and tricks, some some street knowledge, like how Oh, man, how do we make Microsoft stuff look halfway decent? There's some very well adept technical writers that know leaps and bounds more than me about the hacks of using Microsoft products, especially in Word.

But I will say that don't forget the essentials and basics. Like you've said in previous podcast, Becky and Warren Jane on our team, that don't forget, there's master slides, almost like master pages within Word and PowerPoint and using those to your advantage to like scale whatever you're working on. So just making sure that you're setting your headers, for example, to the brand fonts that you can have a Microsoft products into the colorways that align with your brand, I think like is a great hack and a great tool within Microsoft.

And it's, again, applicable to living in InDesign. It's like set the essentials and help that like, guide you through this process and not make your life harder. I also would say that tables, this sounds so nerdy, but tables can be your friend.

And when you're working in Microsoft, particularly when we've helped our clients develop email signatures, that's been like an essential thing, which we could have probably a whole shorter list episode about email signature design in that world. And like collaboration with IT and making that work. But we've had success there of getting, you know, line heights just right, and logos formatted just right for an email signature.

So I would say that tables can be your friend from a design perspective. And again, it's can you bring any graphics outside of Word into your Word document or your PowerPoint, you can, again, get a little bit more advanced in your design outside of Word, but how can you bring that in? And I think that there's opportunities to make a document that might otherwise feel kind of bland and a little basic, a little bit more punched up with bringing in some of those elements from outside. So yeah, I would say remember the basics, remember the essentials, and then utilize charts, tables and external graphics to your advantage to help bolster a document living in a Microsoft software.

Yeah, very true. I think, like in PowerPoint, especially you can you you might still be able to bring in vector shapes into PowerPoint that are then editable, which is pretty impressive, because you can start an illustrator, you can paste into PowerPoint, go from there, you can you can export, you know, ping images that are branded or shapes that are ready to go and pop those and then have those as kind of a kit of parts. PowerPoint certainly more forgiving than Word.

I will say like with Word, my favorite thing about Word, I think is the fact that they they finally embraced styles, textiles. It's not as good as InDesign, of course, but you can go through and kind of set, you know, headers and sub headers and whatever. And it's a little bit painstaking.

You have to you have to kind of defeat Word to make it work the way you want. But once you do, yeah, those those styles definitely set set a good sort of design system that you can get your branding in there with colors and fonts and whatever. And then it makes it easier as you go to just click, set a style, click, set a style.

So you you you work obviously in in many different things, not just Word, PowerPoint, whatever. I think you you spend a lot of time in like Adobe Express, things like that. Maybe you I know you've worked in Canva, which is, you know, unthinkable to me.

I tried, I worked for a couple hours in Canva and I thought I'm I'd quit. I just can't. I don't know how people do this and why they like it.

But you you've had incredible success with stuff like that. Do you do you feel like people should try to like make the switch? Is that how how do you feel about like, you know, Adobe Express, et cetera? Yeah, I have found it useful in collaborating with folks that are not trained up or as comfortable in a program as robust as InDesign, for example. It feels like the happy medium between something developed in PowerPoint and something developed in InDesign.

I wouldn't recommend using Adobe Express or Canva for an SOQ or like a multi page document. But for something that is a PowerPoint or more visual, I would definitely recommend using a tool like Adobe Express to potentially collaborate with your team. The appeal of PowerPoint is anybody on the team can pick that and run run with it.

And that's the great thing about Microsoft products is that it's scalable, people know it, and it's something that can be used throughout the firm. And again, it feels like Adobe Express or tools like Canva are that playground where it's a it's a happy medium where it's more approachable for people to develop something a bit more like graphically intense, but it's not as complex or nuanced as InDesign, which we love as designers or people working in comms and marketing in the creative field. But for folks that are on more of the technical side, it's not necessarily like a requirement or something that they they know very well.

The other benefit of Adobe Express in particular, is that if you have your brand set in the Adobe Creative Cloud, for example, like a library of your colors, your fonts, and even graphic elements, you can pull those in to Adobe Express. And that's a great way for like your technical team to have all these graphic elements, brand elements at their fingertips to be able to use at their disposal, which, again, you can kind of set that up in Microsoft with like headings, or like styles of headers and all that. But I would say that Adobe Express is a bit more robust in the brand elements or the marketing assets that you can upload and have available to your team.

So it feels like a really nice happy medium for certain applications would not recommend it for like a multi page document. But for a PowerPoint that they're presenting to, you know, potential client, yeah, maybe that's a great place to do a first pass. That's great.

So I mean, obviously, the appeal with PowerPoint is, you know, everyone's got it, anybody can make it, they don't need to have an account with something or any kind of knowledge, you can just like we can sign into PowerPoint, it's editable. But it sounds to me like just about anybody can make edits in Adobe Express as well. Is that true? You don't even need an account like anyone can just sign in and make edits? Yeah, I mean, for sure comment.

There's an option like when you do an Adobe share for review, folks that don't have an Adobe account can access that file, leave comments, and you know, set up their username, whatever, however they want to be identified as the commenter. I'll have to get back to see if non Adobe Express users or non creative suite account holders can edit but for sure comment, which I think is a helpful tool as well. We should we should check into that.

I'm curious. You don't need a paid Adobe Creative Cloud account. But you do need to sign up for a free Adobe Express account in order to make edits.

I wonder if we can just phase out Word and PowerPoint altogether. Let's see. Microsoft is hearing this and they are going to crush us.

But you know what, we don't care. We're design forward on this podcast. We want things to look great and be easy.

We want to help our clients save them time and save them heartache. And creating more heartache is not the way to do that Microsoft. Oh my god, if you're listening, stop it.

So okay, Grace, what would you like our listeners to know if they are facing a daunting project, having to use Microsoft Word or PowerPoint, etc, and needs to look great, and they're just ready to smash their head against the wall? Like what would you say to them other than deep breath, relax your jaw and shoulders, etc? How do we get through this together? I think remembering at the root of it, where is this document going to be used? And who's going to be viewing it? I think again, when agencies ask for a proposal, an award document, or some sort of Microsoft software, it's for ease, ultimately. And maybe it could be reviewer ease or ease on the submitter. And so I think as marketers, there's usually this knee jerk reaction, we want to make things, the brand shine, tell the story in the best way.

And I think you can still accomplish that in Microsoft products, but just not getting lost in what is the purpose and application of this, and not making it more complex than it needs to be. And using the tools that you have, or setting the basics, and making sure that your brand comes through. Maybe it's not an as visually compelling way as you could accomplish in InDesign.

But there are ways that you can infuse your brand, both in the writing itself, but also, again, with like the brand touches of colors, font choices, logo and footer graphics that are key to your brand that you can bring externally in. It's remembering that those touches do have an impact, maybe not as much as when you're using something other than a Microsoft product. But just remembering who you're submitting to, what is the application, what can we convey with the parameters that we're in and not overwhelming yourself and like creating more of a complex problem than there needs to be.

That'd be my words of wisdom. Those are good words. It's hard and it's easier said than done, you know, one to know what suffices in is goes above and beyond what the probably the application is for.

I'm sure that if you're thinking in those terms of how can I make it the best that it can be, it probably is going to be more than the person that asked for this in a Word document is expecting. So I think that just alone asking that question or feeling that way is like, you're on the right track. Good tips.

This is this is great. This is a great mindset. I think I think yeah, my my number one tip is if you are especially speaking to those of you who are designers who have to make, you know, templates and files that are then handed off and used by other users who may not be designers.

Something I always do is don't sweat making it 100% functional the way that it should be. If you don't have all the styles set, if you're not using the slide masters, because honestly, the truth is, unless you train them very carefully, 80 to 90% of people don't even know how those things work. So you can just build, you know, build some slides in PowerPoint that look great.

And maybe include some notes. This is what I like to do. And I you know, they can be fun and funny sometimes, you know, like here, if you want to do this, do that.

Here's how you do it. You know, this keyboard shortcut, you know, when you paste, choose, you know, text only choose use destination styles, that sort of thing. That way, if you're handing off, you know, a PowerPoint template or whatever to somebody, it's full of little notes that are just like, hey, you want to know how to do this? Here you go.

And it's like, you can put your own little voice into that document that lives forever and can explain to the people on the other end how to use it. And then you can just go to the bar and drink because designing in Microsoft is the worst. But yeah, we hear you listeners, we're with you.

You have our deepest empathy. If you have any Microsoft product hot tips, please get on our social media and let us know. Rate and subscribe the podcast.

Remember to share the love, make a friend, recommend it to another AEC marketer who wants to feel seen because we see you. We love you. And we are you.

So yeah, see you next time where we will start another fight with a huge global software company. I don't know who we're going to take down next. But Microsoft, we apologize.

Everybody, be kind to yourself, be kind to everyone around you. Have a great day. Have a great week.

Good luck with the rest of your life. Yeah, I don't know. I keep it's always it's too much, but we are too much.

And that's what we do here on the shorter list. Grace, thanks so much for being here.

Kyle. Thanks, as always. Yeah. Bye.

Bye. Signing off from the shorter list. It's never as short as it should be.

This is I don't even know why we call it the shorter list. It's not shorter. We're trying.

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.