What do you see when you review your own proposals with an eye toward how they actually look (as opposed to how they read)? Do you have page after page of text without anything to break up lengthy series of paragraphs? How enticing can that be to the real reviewers who are going to decide whether or not your proposal will make the cut? Reading a proposal is not like reading a fascinating book. Because the language and content of a proposal is often dry and boring, you need to do whatever you can to get reviewers' attention and to make them want to keep reading. One of the best ways to do this is through the use of relevant and attractive graphics.
Some time ago, my friend Heidi wrote this post on "Getting Started With Proposal Graphics." She gives some good pointers about how to think about and use graphics in proposals even if you are not sure exactly what graphics you are going to use.
Now The Proposal Guys blog has an interview with the principal of a graphics design firm that specializes in proposal graphics. Years ago, such firms probably didn't even exist. But these days, we often have a limited number of pages in which to tell our proposal story and increased competition for funding. Thus, we need every edge we can get. And good proposal graphics in combination with a well-written proposal can give us that edge.
One of the things that I like best about this article is the graphic at the very top -- "which proposal would you rather evaluate?" If this doesn't make a compelling case for the use of graphics in proposals, I'm not sure what does.
So get out your crayons..
I just managed a large proposal for an IT firm here in the Washington, DC area, and I was delighted from the beginning that they were highly visual folks who understood the power of graphics in "telling the story." Every major point in the proposal was reinforced with a colorful, dynamic graphic. Despite their use of graphics for their technical sections, however, they tended to use plain text for such pieces as corporate and personnel quals. I introduced them to the use of tables and matrices to synthesize text information, and showed them how quickly an evaluator could determine their outstanding quals by reviewing a well-designed table rather than two pages of endless text that might be peppered with an occasional "bold" or "italic" font to highlight names, position titles, etc. When we finished the proposal last night, they asked me whether they could use my layouts for future proposals (and asked me when I would be available to work for them again!), which I took as the highest compliment.
Thanks so much for taking the time to craft this blog. I often feel like I'm looking in the mirror when I read your entries!
Thanks Deborah - this is a fascinating topic. I see layout as not only important to capture attention but for emphasising key points and guiding the eye through the logic of your structure. If we think about it as "visual ergonomics" we can see why it is really about making it easier for the reader to get your message. We focus on this a lot in advertising but not much in business writing. Strange.