Posted by Jon
What fonts do you use in your proposals?
In a recent post, I talked about some of the objectives we set for the design of a new proposal template, whilst briefing an agency with whom we’d been asked to work by one of our clients. Fonts turned out to be the most controversial aspect of the entire project.
In our detailed design specification, we set out a series of criteria for the ‘body text’ font.
1) It should ‘look professional’ and aid easy evaluation.
2) It should be serif. (That’s received wisdom in the proposal profession, and indeed features in many an exam for the APMP Foundation level qualification. Most – if not all – designers would agree with this for longer documents. But Times New Roman looks so dull!).
3) It should comply with the organisation’s brand guidelines. (Interesting one, that: most companies’ brand marketing policies are drawn up with an eye on brochures, advertisements, websites and letterheads: proposals don’t get a look in).
4) It must be a Windows system font. (Yes, some clients still ask for copies of proposals in Word. And no, we didn’t want to have to licence extra fonts for every proposal, or embed fonts which might not work perfectly for all readers).
Interestingly, there’s a school of thought that these four aren’t all entirely compatible with one another. Eventually, the agency ended up with Book Antiqua (too old-fashioned looking for some, but quite crisp on the printed page), in 10 point (too small for many, but fitting a decent amount of information onto each sheet). But I’m curious to know what others use, and whether other design agencies out there have come up with cleverer ideas.
What fonts do you use in your proposals?
In a recent post, I talked about some of the objectives we set for the design of a new proposal template, whilst briefing an agency with whom we’d been asked to work by one of our clients. Fonts turned out to be the most controversial aspect of the entire project.
In our detailed design specification, we set out a series of criteria for the ‘body text’ font.
1) It should ‘look professional’ and aid easy evaluation.
2) It should be serif. (That’s received wisdom in the proposal profession, and indeed features in many an exam for the APMP Foundation level qualification. Most – if not all – designers would agree with this for longer documents. But Times New Roman looks so dull!).
3) It should comply with the organisation’s brand guidelines. (Interesting one, that: most companies’ brand marketing policies are drawn up with an eye on brochures, advertisements, websites and letterheads: proposals don’t get a look in).
4) It must be a Windows system font. (Yes, some clients still ask for copies of proposals in Word. And no, we didn’t want to have to licence extra fonts for every proposal, or embed fonts which might not work perfectly for all readers).
Interestingly, there’s a school of thought that these four aren’t all entirely compatible with one another. Eventually, the agency ended up with Book Antiqua (too old-fashioned looking for some, but quite crisp on the printed page), in 10 point (too small for many, but fitting a decent amount of information onto each sheet). But I’m curious to know what others use, and whether other design agencies out there have come up with cleverer ideas.
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