Tender design an art in itself

A well designed Tender document helps to support your bid promoting visual language to enhance the narrative text. A successful design will guide the reader through the text utilising complimentary colours and constructive layouts that enhance the reading experience and drawing attention to important points. Over the past three years 23% of businesses thought design had become a lot more important in enabling the firm to achieve its business objectives. Increased significance can be placed on this figure during the Tender writing process, due to the small margins on which Tenders are won and lost. A recent study identified that 59% of firms agreed or agreed strongly that there was a clearly positive link between investment in design and profitability – 13% disagreed or disagreed strongly. These figures highlight the importance of design within the Tender process, with increasing importance being placed on the tender aesthetics as business try to cultivate an advantage over rival bids.

• When designing a Tender it is important to think about;
• Who is the audience – what is the best way to grab their attention
• Incorporating the use of bold text and colours can really make certain sections stand out from the page.
• The use of people and faces throughout the document draws people’s natural inherent human inquisitive nature into what the person within the picture is doing, whether this is demonstrating or completing a task.
• Use your imagination to help a dull topic more appealing; a picture can impart concepts which may be difficult to explain using language along.
• Incorporating pictures into the design can break up the text and make it seem less laborious to read and keep the read more engaged in the document

It is important to assess the impact and value of the design, questions need to be asked about the relevance of the information being presented; a common phrase used in this process is SO WHAT! Each aspect of the tender design needs to be evaluated to assess the impact and value that it adds to the Tender document and overall will it win.
Overall careful design can present the reader with a document that is more effective and persuasive in projecting the skills and abilities of a particular company. A carefully designed and well written Tender document does not just rely on the strength of text but the overall appearance promoting evaluator engagement.