The 7 Must-Have Sections In Your Graphic Design Proposal (2024)

Being a Graphic Designer is getting harder.

With competitiveness at an all-time high, designers need more than breathtaking design skills in today’s market.
They also need to be able to communicate effectively with their clients.

This process can be challenging given the intangible offering of graphic design and the many bottlenecks in the process, including confusion and misunderstanding of expected deliverables.

While every client proposal will be unique, there are a few essentials that every graphic design proposal should have.

Having these down pat will save you time creating your graphic design proposals and ensure client communication is transparent and effective.

Here are the seven sections you need to include in your graphic design proposal.

1. Introduce yourself

Every graphic design proposal needs an introduction, regardless of how short or long.

Introductions help brief clients what they can expect from the proposal and make the basic information clear.

Pieces of these information may include:

Client name
Project title (the problem being solved)
Your name and title
Date of submission

Here’s an example of what a good introduction section looks like:

2. The problem

With the introduction out of the way, it’s time to identify your client’s problem.

Many graphic designers fail to acknowledge what problem their client is looking to resolve, causing them to rush into the solution. They get excited by their deliverables and forget to address the problem at hand.
This is something you want to avoid.

Outlining your client’s problem will not only help you stand out from the competition, but will also strengthen your client relationship. It reaffirms that you understand the problem they’re trying to solve and this is key in gaining your client’s trust.

3. The Solution

Now that you have acknowledged your client’s problem, the solution should be straightforward.

Your solution should explain what you plan to do (i.e. design a logo) and how it will resolve their problem. It’s best to add how it will lead to business success on a holistic scale to strengthen your argument. For example, a new logo design and refined brand colors will increase engagement rate and dwell time on the homepage.

Pointing out the wider business benefits will show your client the extended value of your graphic design services, and help increase the perceived value of your work.

Here’s an example of a well-written solution:

4. The deliverables

Some graphic designers assume that the outcome of their design efforts can be easily visualized by their clients. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case.

Part of being a great graphic designer is the ability to communicate effectively, and a deliverables section will allow you to achieve this when it comes to the expected outputs. It helps your clients know what they’re actually getting for their money and also helps prevent scope creep.

Here’s an example:

5. The process

Transparency is paramount in any service selling transaction.
A major challenge that many clients face is the ability to justify the costs paid. One of the biggest factors contributing to this challenge is the uncertainty around the process of producing the deliverable.

While you as the graphic designer are aware of how much work is involved, your client may not. Therefore, you need to make your client aware of the work behind the scenes and a ‘Process’ section is a great way to do this.

6. The cost

Most graphic design proposals are won or lost in the cost section.

Before you even start working on your proposal, ask your client what their total budget is. While this can be scary and you might get the sense that you’re encroaching on some line, you’re not. It’s critical information for you to know.

Besides, discussing the client’s budget out in the open before creating the proposal is a positive scenario for you both. This conversation will help the client develop a budget for the project, and it will also let you know whether or not the project is financially worthwhile for you before you put in the hard work of developing a proposal.

Once you’ve identified the budget, the breakdown of your costs should be comprehensive yet concise to quickly understand.

A definitive report ties back to both the deliverables and process sections. It’s best to take time and be mindful when explaining how the total cost came to be.

Here’s an example of a comprehensive cost breakdown:

7. Call to action

Now that all the information is out there, including the deliverables, process, and costs, it’s time to prompt the prospect to take the next steps: to accept your proposal and kick off the project.

Ideally, you’ll want to give them a way to accept and sign off on the proposal straight away. If you’re sending your proposal as a PDF, Word, or Google Doc, this can be a little difficult as they don’t really have built-in acceptance or signature features.

To solve this, you could do any of the following:

Ask the prospect to send you an email saying something like “Please proceed”
Link to contract (or other binding agreement) in a tool like Docusign, which gives them the ability to accept and sign.
You can share an e-business card as a CTA. It can include contact details such as yourbusiness virtual phone numbernumber for them to reach out along with links to your proposal document and online portfolio.

Alternatively, if you use a dedicated proposal tool, it will allow your prospect to accept and sign the proposal right there from within it.

Here’s an example:

Whatever you do, don’t force your prospective client to print out your proposal, sign it, scan it and send it back. That’s time-consuming, particularly if someone doesn’t have immediate access to a printer, and research shows that it dramatically increases the time it takes to get documents signed off.

Bonus tips

Send your proposal as a web page

If you’re sending your proposals in a document format like PDF, you might be doing it wrong. After all, the PDF was invented in the same decade as the Palm Pilot, and I can’t imagine you’re using a Palm Pilot anymore.

By sending your proposal as a web one page proposal instead of as a PDF, you get the following benefits:

Responsivity: Web pages are responsive, meaning they look great on all desktop, tablet, and mobile devices. With the majority of email being opened on mobile devices these days, you’re ensuring your leads have a great experience with your proposal.
Security: Web pages can not only be password protected but you can also add time limits that ensure your proposals can’t be viewed after a certain date, as well as view limits, so they can only be viewed a certain number of times. You can even require prospects to log in using their work email address before viewing the page to ensure that only the right people see it.
Interactivity: Web pages can have interactive content like video, audio, maps, forms, spreadsheets, InVision Prototypes and more embedded into them. You can even add things like pricing calculators that allow prospects to see what the pricing would look like when they add that extra upsell.
Trackability: Every interaction your leads have with a web page can be tracked, so you can see when they view your proposal, for how long, what content they view, where they’re viewing from, and more.
Accessibility: You can help build a world within easier reach. Because web pages use clear HTML markup, accessibility tools like screen readers are able to figure out what content is on the page—meaning the 50 million Americans who have a disability will have no trouble accessing your proposals and documents (and you won’t fall afoul of the Office for Civil Rights).
Editability: Unlike a PDF, web pages can be edited at any time, even after you’ve sent it to the prospect. So if you discover you’ve made a typo, you can quickly go in and change it before anyone notices.

Tools like Qwilr make it easy to create your proposals and other sales and marketing documents as web pages. Use the WYSIWYG interface to add text, photos, videos, prototypes, and other features to create proposals and voila. All that’s left for you to do is email your prospective client a link instead of a plain old attached PDF.

Start with a template

There are some great pre-made proposal templates out there, like this one from Qwilr, that can give you a headstart on creating a great proposal.

They come with pre-written content like the sections mentioned above, beautiful images, pricing tables and more and can significantly reduce the amount of time it takes you to create and send proposals.

Recycle your best content

It’s likely that you’ll be writing many website design proposals over the course of your career, and it makes no sense to start from scratch each time.

So I recommend doing one or more of the following:

Organize effective proposals in a dedicated spot: If you’ve created a proposal you think is particularly good, save it in a dedicated spot rather than just leaving it deep in your disorganized Google Drive or Dropbox. That way, when you need to create another proposal you can easily come back to it, make a few edits, and send it off.
Put a pin on sections that you don’t change much: There are certain sections of graphic design proposals that don’t change much from proposal to proposal. Things like ‘About Us’ and ‘Our Team’ are great examples, and even the ‘Costs’ section can often be quite similar if you’re doing similar types of projects over and over again. So make a bit of a swipe file (even if it’s just in a Google Doc or Word Doc) where you drop in some of this reusable content, and then you can easily copy and paste it into new proposals in the future.

In conclusion

With more graphic designers entering the field every day it’s getting more difficult to stand out and win work.

However, by putting some time and effort into your proposals and implementing some of the advice above, you get a better chance of increasing your close rate, winning more work and growing your business.

Keep learning more:

What Elements Do You Need In Your Logo? Top Tips And Famous Examples
20 Design Ideas For Print That You Can Apply Right Now
Top 10 Best Logo Designs to Inspire You

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Written by DesignCrowd on Thursday, March 12, 2020

DesignCrowd is an online marketplace providing logo, website, print and graphic design services by providing access to freelance graphic designers and design studios around the world.