Creating Graphics for Proposals with Impact: Winning Proposal Graphics Part 2 of 2

In Part 1 of our series, we discussed the many ways graphics can impact your proposal. They can enhance your brand, showcase your understanding of the client, and present complex information in an easily digestible format. They contribute to your evaluators’ ease of review and make an eye-catching contrast to the sea of text that so often swamps government proposals. In short, they’re your proposal’s lifeboat, and your port in a storm. In this post, we’ll discuss tips for conceptualizing, designing, and using graphics in your proposals.

Conceptualizing Your Graphics

When drafting your proposal sections, you should also begin drafting the graphic ideas that will go along with each section’s text. Take notes, make sketches, and stay close to the main message in your text when developing your visuals. Keep in mind that a graphic needs to deliver a quick, easy-to-understand message; if a reader needs to take too much time to study your graphic, it’s not doing its job. Your graphic should be understandable in context, and your surrounding text should lead into and reference your graphic accordingly.

Consider graphics used in previous proposals. Which ones were especially effective? When developing your library of proposal content, keep track of graphics. You may only need to make text updates to an existing graphic or make a color change to reflect your branding.

Designing Your Graphics

Now that the concept is clear and the content is developed, the design phase can begin. Whether you work with a professional designer or use design software on your own, here are some key concepts to keep in mind at this stage.

• Consider page count and flow. Think about the size and shape your graphic needs to be to fit within the page count restrictions. Also think about how text will wrap around it.
• Design with the final size in mind. Shrinking large graphics can result in text that’s too small to be legible, much less compliant with your proposal’s requirements.
• Color contrast. Not all proposals are required to follow Section 508 accessibility standards for people with disabilities.However, it’s still a good idea to pay attention to these standards when it comes to graphics. This is especially true when it comes to color. Make sure the color contrast of your text against your background color is sharp enough to be easily read.
• Black and white. A lot of proposals are submitted electronically and how they appear when printed is out of your control. Preview your graphics in black and white and test print in grayscale and color.
• Be ready for changes during review. With multiple reviewers and subject matter experts weighing in at various review stages, graphics may go through many revisions. Graphics with critical facts or names, such as team or management organizational charts, may be under constant revision. Build time into the process to take edits into account, and keep in mind that when information changes in one graphic, this may create ripple effects elsewhere.
• Copyedit and consistent checks. Once your proposal is ready for copyedit, make sure not to skip graphics. Consistency between the text and graphics and clean text with no typos are two quality must-haves for your proposal.

Review and Production: Using Your Graphics

When it’s time to put your graphics into your document, a few quality assurance tips will help keep your document organized and file sizes down.

• No pasting. Many Word users report that copying and pasting graphics in Word results in larger file sizes, which can cause submission problems if there’s an attachment file size limit. Use Word’s Insert Picture feature instead.
• Captions and references. Make a pass through your document once graphics are in place to make sure captions are numbered and inserted appropriately; references in the text to the graphics should be updated accordingly.
• Section 508 and alt-text. To make your images and your document Section 508 compliant, make sure to tag images with short descriptions using the alt-text feature for Word or PDF documents.

Relevant, well-designed graphics help create a cohesive story and message for winning proposals. By following best practices during their conception, design, and placement, you and your proposal team can create engaging and readable documents while avoiding production issues.

If you need help with the creative and technical issues surrounding graphics, experts in the unique niche of proposal graphic design (both proposal writers and proposal graphic designers) can help you to brainstorm ideas and product designs, as well as assist with production. Graphics add value to your proposals. Investing in them is worth it.