For designers
You take care of the design, I make sure it works in Office
That combination delivers the best result — but only if we collaborate early enough. On this page you'll find practical guidelines for delivering specifications, so translating your design into Word and PowerPoint goes as smoothly as possible.
Delivering specifications
The days of fully worked-out layout sheets are long gone. I don't work with the Adobe Suite — I can't open InDesign files, and for Illustrator files I use Affinity. You can deliver your design as a PDF.
Color profile
Make sure your color profile is based on RGB. If you work in RGB, I can pick up the colors directly and accurately from the PDF. If you work in CMYK, a conversion takes place when saving as PDF — the resulting RGB values can differ from what you intended. In that case, specify the desired RGB values explicitly.
PowerPoint page size
For a 16:9 presentation, use a page of 33.867 by 19.05 cm. I regularly receive a PDF that uses double the width and height — meaning I have to divide all font sizes by two.
Page content
Make sure the page contains only the design, or also deliver a version where that's the case. My workflow is to export the PDF to separate PNG images that I place in the background to build the design on top of.
Fonts
Choosing fonts
If you use a non-standard font, make sure the client is aware of the possible issues. My starting point is that fonts are installed — the templates don't check for this.
Excellent resources for choosing fonts:
- Choosing fonts for PowerPoint templates — Julie Terberg (applies equally to Word)
- Guide to Cloud Fonts in Microsoft 365 — Julie Terberg
Also consider Microsoft Cloud Fonts — these are installed dynamically and are therefore a serious, low-maintenance alternative. Note: Excel doesn't support font embedding. And if you choose Google Fonts, use the 'static fonts' for Office — variable fonts cause problems when creating a PDF.
Font size
In Word you can only specify the font size in whole and half points. I regularly come across strange sizes in hundredths of a point in PDFs — take that into account. Word and PowerPoint work with a fixed list of font sizes for the increase/decrease shortcuts. The example below is from Word; the list in PowerPoint differs slightly:
Line spacing and white space
I can read font size, typeface, and weight accurately from the PDF. Line spacing I can approximate visually, but that's unnecessary extra work. A relative line spacing in InDesign doesn't translate directly to an equivalent setting in Word — the calculation differs because the two programs compute line spacing differently. So please specify line spacing in points wherever possible. That's also the most reliable setting within Word itself.
It helps me enormously if you specify per style:
- Line spacing (preferably in pt)
- Space before and after
- Optionally 'Page break before' (usually only for chapters)
- Optionally 'Keep with next' (usually applies to all headings)
Tracking and kerning
Office is very rudimentary when it comes to kerning and letter spacing. Don't expect the subtlety you have in InDesign — I can only specify letter spacing in tenths of a point.
Styles
A consistent style set
Which text styles do you want to offer? I often see plain text in a letter design, but in practice there's still a need for more structure: subheadings, numbered and unnumbered lists at multiple levels.
This is the style set of the KeyScript letter template:
Heading numbering
At various agencies I see, for example, that a report's cover title is styled as H1, the subtitle as H2, and a chapter in the body as H3. That's very unusual in Office. In Office, Chapter is H1, Section is H2, and so on. There's a built-in Title style for the cover. It helps me enormously if you don't call a chapter H3 — otherwise I'm constantly recalculating.
Colors and the Office theme
This is an important topic that deserves more attention than you might expect.
RGB vs. CMYK
Office only works with RGB. If you work in RGB in InDesign, I can pick up the colors directly from the PDF. If you work in CMYK, specify the desired RGB values explicitly to avoid deviations caused by conversion.
Theme colors
A Word or PowerPoint template uses an Office theme, with theme colors as an important part of it. Here's how you define them:
And here you see the KeyScript theme colors and custom colors in the color palette. Signal red was added here as a custom color — not as an accent color — with corresponding tints at 80, 60, 40, and 20%:
Accent colors and charts
Accent 1 through Accent 6 are used by default for the first six data series in a chart. The colors appear side by side in that order — so there needs to be a logical build-up with sufficient contrast between adjacent colors. Avoid signal colors like red as an accent color.
Custom colors
Colors that don't fit the theme can be added as custom colors. Up to 50 colors (5 rows of 10 columns) are possible. Custom colors need a name. I fill unused positions with white 'dummy' colors named 'DO NOT USE'.
Hyperlinks
The theme has separate colors for Hyperlink and Followed Hyperlink. Commonly used: black (so only the underline is visible) or blue. You may use the same tint for both.
Tables
All standard table options in Word and PowerPoint are based on the theme colors and are often quite loud.
I can't hide them, but I can add custom designs — these appear at the top under the 'Custom' category, as shown above.
Here's the KeyScript standard table — a combination of a colored header row and striped rows in quieter tints:
Here's also the KeyScript text box — an extra table style used for eye-catching text boxes:
And the corresponding table styles:
You can specify colors and borders for the whole table, for the first and last row, for the first and last column, and for even and odd rows and columns. Line weights are limited to a number of fixed values:
Word has a graphical designer for table styles. For PowerPoint I have to build table styles in XML, which is more labor-intensive. But it does free the user from those ugly default tables.
Layout and grid
Grid
A good design is based on a grid, for both Word and PowerPoint. For PowerPoint I can set guides on the master or on the layouts. For Word it helps if I know what the left and right margins are — and if your grid is based on inches, you don't need to convert the measurements to centimeters for me.
Content needs to fit
Also think about whether text will fit. Does every return address fit in a narrow colophon? Does a long email address fit too? Do the details of every branch office fit in the footer? Don't just think about 'the picture', but also about real-world use.
Continuation sheets and the last page
A Word document can have different formatting on the first page. That means you also need to think about the continuation sheet. I regularly receive a letter design that only shows the first page. Does the continuation sheet also have the logo, or just a brandmark? Is there a page number in the footer, and if so, where and how large?
Sometimes a design includes a final page — a back cover or colophon. That's possible, but isn't 100% foolproof to achieve in Word.
Columns
Try to avoid switching the number of columns within a document. Working with columns is already not intuitive for users — switching between different numbers of columns almost always causes problems.
Switching orientation
Switching between portrait and landscape pages within a document can really only be done cleanly with a button on the ribbon — that button takes care of all the necessary adjustments to margins, header/footer, and element positioning. It helps if I have a version of the logo that I can place in the top-right of the page, meaning the white space above and to the left is baked into the image. Note: Word rotates the margins when switching orientation — a top margin of 4 cm suddenly becomes the right margin. That's exactly why you can't solve this with standard Word functionality.
PowerPoint specific
Placeholders
I often can't tell from a design how large a placeholder should be. What really helps me is if you indicate in some way how big the placeholder should be — for example with gray boxes. Just make sure I know whether those gray boxes are part of the design or instructions for me.
Notes pages
Besides the Slide Master there's also a Notes Master. Does this need attention too? That's a question worth asking upfront.
Accessible documents
Do you need to make documents accessible according to WCAG guidelines? That's never 100% achievable in Word or PowerPoint. The official guidelines are tough reading.
The S.C.H.I.T. Deck by Stephy Hogan offers a much more accessible overview and makes it easier to find the guidelines that apply to your specific piece of content. You'll find more information on the Bookshelf.