Every now and then a friend or colleague of mine passes me a design proposal from the competition. I’m always interested in checking out how other design companies work and how they approach potential customers.

Just the other day when I was cleaning up my office I started putting together a pile of those design proposals. After browsing through a couple of them, I noticed that they actually really really s*cked. Most of them just cover one page and are one step away of being written on the back of a napkin.

Aim to hit

We spend a lot of time setting up a template for our design proposals. I’m not an active promoter of my design work and I don’t want to send out 10 proposals a week. Having a good design proposal helps you to not only land bigger jobs but to also more easily land the smaller jobs. You can honestly say we aim to hit.

In this post I’ll walk you through our template for design proposals. Some of the images have Dutch writing on them, but they are just there for example purposes.

1. The Frontpage

The frontpage gives the customer a first impression of the design proposal. Don’t just copy paste the company logo and make up a project name. Trust me; they have seen their own logo before. Instead make it more personal and appealing.

I always collect a couple of branch related images and place them in predefined areas. I also include who it’s written for and by what company.

2. Introduction

Another important part of the proposal is the introduction of your company. Chances are pretty big that the person you met on your first meeting is going to discuss your proposal with someone else. That is why it is always important to reintroduce yourself and try to lay out the spirit of your company.

You don’t need a long list that looks like a resume. Just a couple of powerfull sentences. Try answering some of these questions for example.

Where are you coming from?

Starting out from the smallest attic in down town Amsterdam, Design Company X is an enthusiastic bunch of people with big ambitions. Currently located in a nice office in the centre of Amsterdam, we run the network behind Design Company X.

What do you do?

We are a full service company, which actually means that we can do anything you want us to do. Print or digital? Flash or Photoshop? Anything goes. Design and development under one roof, that is our power.

What is your vision?

A small agency with a clear vision. We do what we do best and what we do is good. The people we work with share that vision and passion.

3. Case

This is the part where you usually get stuck and the part what’s costing you hours. Defining the assignment.

Don’t elaborate to much and go off ranting about the customers vision and the market they are working in. You are trying to land the job and if you slightly misinterpreter the customers visions chances are he is not going to work with you.

Just simply state the current situation. The situation where the customer wants to go to and how you are planning that design/development wise.

This is also a great place to state what you are not going to do. If the customer has a nephew that runs his own home made server, gently tell him your are not going to install the website or provide support for this.

We once had to log into a completely shutdown ISS server using a VPN connection and three passwords, just because some IT company (200+ employees) wanted to host the website on their own internal server. Those are hours you are not getting paid for.

4. Work Method

Chances are building a website is kind of abracadabra for your customer. They like to know what is going to happen and when it’s going to happen. It keeps them in control. Setup a simple work method that covers the different parts of the design process.

Meet -> Plan -> Design & Develop -> Accept -> Implement -> Evaluate

5. Planning

Since this is still the proposal phase, there is no need for large and difficult plannings. Just provide a table with weekly milestones and appointments. This is also where you point out the level of commitment you are expecting from your customer.

6. Costs

There are some great articles out there for calculating your design rates. In essence it’s simple: divide your yearly costs + expected income by the number of productive hours. That is what you charge per hour.

Try the Hourly Rate Calculator over at freelanceswitch.com to calculate your hourly rate.

So what are you going to charge for your project? Are you going to provide hours or a fixed price? I’ve seen some funny proposals where someone charges 9 bucks per hour and asks a fixed price of 4500 dollars. That means he is going to spend 500 hours on your two page webdesign. Wow, that has to be a good design ;)

The quality of the design and the price should be concurrent with the number of hours you spend on the project. So how do you convince your customer of this? Split up the costs and use design rounds!

The following example is for designing a landing page:

Design Costs

In this case the customer has one design round where he can provide feedback. Setting design rounds not only helps you to manage the costs, but it’s an efficient way of setting a sign-off date.

HTML & CSS

The costs for HTML and CSS are separate from the design costs. If the client want’s more input on the design those costs don’t have to change.

Project Management

There is also a Project Management fee included. Some people don’t agree with this, but I think answering emails, phone calls and planning meetings are not included within my hourly rate. If a client want’s to meet up a couple of times I usually charge them 50% of my hourly rate for the duration of the meeting. This is fair for both parties.

Also don’t forget to inform the client of your payment schedule. John O’Nolan has written up a great article on this. You should definitely read it.

7. Contact Sheet

This is optional, but it’s considered good practice to include a contact sheet with your full company information. Include at least the following items:

• Contact Person
• Physical Address
• Website and Email
• Tax numbers
• Chamber of Commerce

Terms and Conditions

Off course you should also include your Terms and Conditions. There is a lot to say about them, but since this article is getting kind of long I will cover that subject some other time.

If you have any great tips or questions, don’t hesitate to start a discussion in the comments area below.


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