A creative strategy for designing Procurement Proposals

When designing a response for a procurement proposal, I like to use a three phase design process: discovery, strategy & design. In the discovery phase, I learn about the client and the proposal. In the strategy phase, I conduct a brainstorming session and come up with ideas to define a visual concept. And in the Design phase I am ready to apply design and layout to the proposal based on the visual concepts.

DISCOVERY
This is the first step in understanding the scope of the project. Learning about the client, RFP and conducting research are some of the steps taken during this phase. The content on procurement proposals is proprietary and contains IP that cannot be shared or is confidential.

A win theme strategy session is conducted to define the key messages and benefits that differentiate the proposal from competitors. Later, a “tagline” for the cover page is populated and is aligned with win themes messages.

STRATEGY
Based on the tagline created for the cover page and keeping in mind the win themes, I go through a brainstorming session to identify key imagery and visuals that will communicate the ideal messaging .

Ideating different options for the cover page and populating concept boards is the highlight of the design process for a business proposal. This is when most of the creativity comes into place.
These ideas are presented to the team for a critique session.

Based on the feedbacks received from the team, a concept is chosen and usually an iteration is required to define final cover page and visual theme for the proposal.

Then is time to define visual guidelines for the proposal, to ensure every piece is consistent and collaborators can follow my vision as lead designer.

DESIGN
Custom templates are designed for the proposal, reflecting the visual concept and are used as a collaborative tool for all the team members to start working on the content. This avoids duplication of efforts when working with multiple documents and allows me as designer the time needed to concentrate on other key graphics for the opportunity.

Once all the content is inserted in the proposal template, I go through formatting and apply the design to each of the pages. As final step and before preparing final PDF for distribution, interactive elements are also included.

In some instances, additional pieces have to be created to support the response. The same concepts and visual guidelines are applied to ensure design consistency.

The Design Process