Designing in Word

The majority of my communications professors have told me that it's just not a good idea to design anything in Microsoft Word. They claim that it's cumbersome and really difficult to work with aligning things, and using shapes effectively. I completely agree that Word is really hard to work with if you want to design something. It was created as a word processor after all, not a design program. I had one communications teacher last Winter semester, who required us to make a flyer in Word as one of our assignments. She told us that when we're working in the real world at a company that may not have any design programs, Word can be a useful tool to know how to learn. The event advertisement below, I created in Word. We weren't even allowed to use Photoshop to doctor up the picture.

I thought I would never have to use Word for designing something again because I'm going into design and I assumed that any real design company would have designing programs; however, I was wrong. I am currently creating an advertising campaign for the Idaho Falls Institute. We have been redesigning the brochure that they have with all the times and dates on them. As a group we realized that we would have to re-create the document in Word because the Institute directors don't have design programs and wouldn't be able to alter it for future semesters if we did it in an Adobe program.

Just beware. Even though Word is difficult and ridiculous to work with, it has to be done sometimes. Learn how to design with Word. It's extremely useful. Even in the professional world.