Design 2: Business Proposal Cover & Back

Introduction

This project presents the cover and back pages of a business proposal. Ideally, these pages would be included in a comb-bound proposal package with front and back clear sheet protectors—much like a report.

The purpose of this re/design is to present a more professional front to potential as well as existing clients. The company that would utilize this proposal design is an environmental, safety, and engineering consulting firm located in Lubbock, Texas. Ideally, when people think about the environment, they think about a blue sky or green trees or recycling bins. Likewise, when people think about safety, they think hard hats and yellow caution signs. Lastly, when people think about engineering, they think blueprints and construction equipment.

Because the consulting company is small (comprised of nine total employees), it must streamline a proposal package that can be used for all of the services it offers--but not all at one time. A company might be interested in safety services but not in environmental services. Plus, I'm hesitant to put a picture of green grass and blue skies on the cover of a proposal for an area where trees are rare and the sky is more likely to be brown. A pretty picture would be representative but not realistic; and instead of creating an image of something that a potential client may not relate to, I'd rather just use a simple but bold graphic.

Therefore, I went with a design that was universal and that could serve as an identifier for the consulting company. The blue is the company's signature cover, and the lines in the design incorporate the company's logo on a grander scale.


Contrast

I chose to utilize a dark blue graphic background for these business proposal pages. I chose the color and graphic for specific reasons. First, blue is the consulting company’s signature color: it’s incorporated into the company logo that appears on the back cover. Secondly, the shape of the graphic—the perpendicular lines that comprise the structure of a globe—is also in incorporated into the company’s logo. Therefore, these two elements combined tie the consulting company to the document itself.

The contrast comes into play where I have broken up the dark graphic background by including a clean, white area for my text. However, I didn’t just go from dark blue to white. I transitioned the contrast by bringing in a dark blue horizontal line to border the white top and bottom edges of the text area. Therefore, I have a type of divider from the graphic to the text. The dividers convey the message that the viewer’s eyes should be focused on what is between the lines.

Additionally, I utilized the same dark blue color into my text so that it jumps out from the white. The title, “Proposal for Environmental Compliance Management” is a 30-point Cambria, bold, for added emphasis. The subtitle where the client’s name and address is located is set in the same typeface but in a smaller 14-point font. I wanted the subtitle to be less emphasized than the heading because, mainly, the client knows what the company’s name and address are. They should be more attracted to what the proposal is than to reading where their company is located.


Repetition

I have a few forms of repetition throughout this document. First, my repetitive use of color is evident. My thematic colors are blue and white because, again, those are the consulting company’s signature colors. I have repeated the dark blue graphic background on both cover pages, and I also incorporated the same white text area with the two horizontal dark blue divider lines. Additionally, my font selection has remained consistent on each page: dark blue Cambria.


Alignment

My alignment remained relatively elementary throughout the document design. My placement of the white background for the text was intentional. I chose not to center the text area in the center of the page because of the existing color gradient in the graphic background. You can see that the background contains lighter shades of blue toward the lower right-hand edge of the page. Putting the white text area in the center would have saturated the document with lighter colors and would have made the document heavier in certain areas. Plus, American readers’ eyes naturally gravitate toward the top of a document since that is where text typically begins. Obviously, I didn’t place my text area right at the top, but it is situated higher up than the center.

Another factor for the placement of my white text area was because of the lines in the graphic background. The dominant downward sloping line would theoretically intersect with the title. I wanted visually to match these two elements up so that the graphic and the text meshed well.

I placed the background image on the document so that the dominant downward sloping line would also meet up at the right-hand corner of the page. American audiences tend to flip pages of documents either at the top or bottom right-hand corners. The original graphic was much larger than the 8 ½” x 11” space I was working with, so I really had my choice of positioning the graphic in the most effective way. Therefore, I chose intentionally to have the dominant downward sloping line intersect with the bottom right-hand corner of the page as an subconscious cue for the reader to flip the page.


Proximity

Just like repetition in this design, I maintained simple proximity as well. Again, I positioned the graphic background so that the dominant downward sloping line would intersect with both the first word of the title on the cover and the right-hand corner of the page. And, I positioned the white background above the center horizontal axis of the document so that the eyes naturally begin in that area.

The title, "Proposal for Environmental Compliance Management," is the most important textual element on both pages. Therefore, it has been set apart from the rest of the text. Although the title technically has been left-aligned, the title is long enough that I was able to also center it on the page. Then, I grouped together (but set apart from the title) the customer's information.


Perception

Overall, my intention for this document was to present a clean, clear, and professional front to potential clients. Additionally, I wanted a design that would work for various sectors of the business without overstating that it belonged to one sector versus another. In other words, I wanted a streamlined proposal cover set that needed only updates to the text in order to be usable for every proposal prepared by the consulting company. 

Another underlying aspect of perception regarding this design is branding. My goal is for people to automatically think "Benton & Associates" when they see the colors blue and white with a resemblance of a globe attached to it. Eventually, people might not even need to read what the text says to know what an artifact is attached to. 

Culture

The hope of consulting companies is that they don't accidentally market to too-small of a potential client base. Designing individual proposal covers for each proposal could be costly in terms of overhead since the company could potentially quote up to 30 different projects. Therefore, efficiency was key when thinking about the company's needs. 

Moreover, taking on a very generalised design doesn't exclude any particular sector, and it doesn't highlight just one area of our services, either. We're not only marketing to safety clients but also to environmental and engineering clients.


Rhetoric

These documents say professional, and they will be used by various project managers to solicit business. They will also be used by potential clients for information purposes. The important part of these proposal pages is that they let the customer know that we are a serious, professional company capable of taking on whatever their needs are. Plus, and as already stated, they relay a persona of the company without much text: the colors and graphics work together to represent the company.

Conclusion

This project produced a realistic concept for proposal presentations. It works for the consulting company because the text on the cover page can be easily manipulated to fit any proposal needed without compromising any professionalism in the design. It also works for the client because it provides the introductory information about what the package is about: title (what the whole thing is), client (yes, we've prepared this thing for you), and the date (because all parties need a reference date). Plus, the back cover page indicates who prepared the entire package, and that is important because a company marketing its services always wants to be reached easily.

This may not have a really cool design, and it may not present a ton of information--but it's not supposed to. It says exactly what it needs to say: that it's professional and that the consulting company doesn't hide behind false advertisement.