“We can add some pretty pictures if we have room at the end.” I have heard this more times than I care to remember. It usually comes in response to me asking about a team’s plan for what illustrations to include in their proposals and what fraction of each page they intend to allocate to visual elements. Whenever I hear this, I know I have my work cut out for me. This opening statement shows a fundamental lack of understanding how hard well-crafted illustrations work. It also demonstrates ignorance of how much effort they take.

Ask yourself what you see first on a page. Is it the third sentence of the fourth paragraph, or is it the illustration in the top right corner? Once an illustration has piqued your interest, do you then look at the caption to learn how it relates to the proposal? Now that the writers have grabbed your attention, are you more motivated to read the body text? “You don’t  get a second chance to make a first impressions” is the old saying. So why would you relegate your illustrations to the end of your planning “as space and time permits?” 

You cannot afford to miss the persuasive power of well crafted illustrations. 

Hard-working illustrations, by themselves and as a sequence from one page to the next, are the scaffolding that support the argument for your selection. They provide evidence instead of simply asserting that your team is the right team. Illustrations can better show the reader why you should be selected, rather than text that keeps shouting: “Pick me! Pick me!” 

Illustrations also have the amazing power to create consensus, or reveal the lack thereof. A former colleague helped me understand this process through the concept of a boundary object. On proposal teams, illustrations get a concept out of the individuals’ minds. Once someone grabs a pen and starts to sketch, a vague concept becomes accessible for collaborative manipulation. This is when superficial agreement starts to grow into shared understanding. That process takes time and the engagement of team leadership. It’s hard to believe how often I heard more than one senior leader say: “oh, that’s what we are doing?” Until you see it in front of you, everyone thinks the concept they have in their head is what they agreed to. Once your team has a shared understanding of what you are proposing, you can make a plan to communicate it.

Let me give you a concrete example. Say you are writing a technical proposal with a 20-page limit. Before you plan out what words you are going to write, you set aside at least one-quarter to one-third of the page count for anything that isn’t text. This includes illustrations, tables, captions, callout boxes and pull quotes. So instead of 20 pages of text, you have room for 13 to 15 pages. Each page would have at least one visual element. Standing on their own, without the supporting body text, these visual elements layout the main points of your proposal. For your 20-page proposal, you should have, in round numbers, 10 to 20 illustrations and 10 to 20 tables, plus their captions. Who can afford the space to include that much material? – My answer is simple. Winning teams can afford it. They can afford it because their proposal language is lean and doesn’t duplicate material in text that is already in visuals. Winning proposals deliver their messages once and they deliver them well. 

Because good illustrations take a lot of time to develop, your teams needs to start them early. Ideally, that work will delay the writing of the body text. And that’s a good thing. It is much easier to move illustrations and tables than to restructure pages of text. Visuals are individual blocks that can be easily rearranged. Body text is by its nature a continuum and more resistant to restructuring. Once you have the illustrations in the right sequence, the body text will be much easier to write. 

Please don’t let anyone tell you that you have no room for images. Indeed, you won’t have room for pretty decorations, but you cannot afford to miss out on the persuasive power of well-crafted illustrations.