|
Your Proposal's Cover: First Impressions Count!
By Dan Safford
True story: A client of mine visited one of his clients, a director of
public works. It was simply a "touch base" call—Hi, I'm alive, just
thought I'd meet and we could talk.
On the way out my client asked the director "Oh, by the way, I'm
curious—what do you like to see in a proposal? What really gets you
excited?"
The director smiled and turned to a stack of proposals sitting on a
side table in his office and picked the one off the top and held it up
for my client to see. The artwork on the cover was arresting—simple yet
very attractive, with the whole concept of the project arrayed in a
readily recognizable graphical form.
"This is what I like," the director said. "I spied this as soon as it
came in. I haven't read it, but the cover tells me that it'll probably
be good—well thought out and easy to follow. When it came in I
immediately put it on top of the stack. I'll read it first."
The moral of the story: First impressions count. With the competition
as stiff as it is, every detail makes a difference. The cover is the
first thing they see, and if it looks drab, or hastily put together, or
routine, the reader will likely think that that's what the content will
be like as well.
Spend time on the cover art. Here are some tips:
If you don't have a graphics person on staff, hire a freelancer. The amount you spend for her services will repay big dividends.
Start early. If you wait until the end of the proposal cycle,
you will come up with a cover that will do, but that will not really
communicate your message.
Invite your graphics specialist to sit in on strategy sessions. This way, she can get a sense of what you're trying to convey. Then she can develop a way to conceptualize this.
Build in reviews of the cover art all along the process. Have
the graphics designer sketch out a few concepts and review them. This
way you won't wait until the end to see a finished piece of art that
may have to be re-done if you don't find it acceptable. Serious waste
of money.
Give the designer some free rein. You may have some
pre-conceived ideas about what looks good, but she probably has better
ones. It's her business, after all. I have seen many good design
concepts go down the drain because the boss has said something like,
"That's not how I would do it," and then suggest a collage of project
elements that ends up looking like covers from the rest of the firms
proposing.
You need to make your proposal stand out from the crowd, and this is a place to do it.
|
