Excel may be your most overlooked design tool... That's because of a few Excel features that you already know about but probably aren't using. Here's how to use them so that you can make Excel look less like... Excel. Shapes & Images: you can build complex backgrounds and effects using the 'insert'>'shape' and 'insert'>'pictures' sections of Excel. You can layer these shapes and images on top of each other to build a design in the same way you would build a powerpoint slide. Text fields: text do