Bid Design for Bid Writers: Insights from the Writing and Design Roadshow
Introduction
At the APMP UK Bid Writing & Design Roadshow last month, Cíara Gilsenan, Senior Bid Designer and Chair of the Design Focus Group, challenged some common misconceptions. She explained that design is not about making proposals look attractive; instead, it is about helping evaluators find, understand and score information more effectively.
For bid writers, her session ‘Winning More through Design: What Evaluators Really See’ was a powerful reminder that even the strongest written content can be weakened if evaluators struggle to navigate, interpret or recall it. As Cíara explained, evaluators are rarely reading our submissions line-by-line from beginning to end. And they are often working under time pressure, reviewing multiple submissions, dealing with interruptions and focusing on scoring criteria.
Cognitive ease
One of the key themes of the session was cognitive ease. Evaluators have finite mental capacity, and every unnecessary obstacle in a proposal increases the effort required to understand the message. Dense formatting, cluttered layouts and poor structure create what psychologists call ‘extraneous cognitive load’, forcing evaluators to spend energy decoding content rather than assessing its value.
To reduce this burden, proposals should be accessible, relevant and integrative. Clear typography, meaningful headings, logical structure and appropriate spacing help evaluators process information faster. Pairing visuals with adjacent explanations also improves comprehension and retention. The message for writers was clear: focus on making content easy to find and understand, not just comprehensive.
Scanning versus reading
Another important insight related to attention. Evaluators naturally scan documents rather than reading every word. Design influences where their eyes land first and what information they remember. Elements such as contrast, hierarchy, emphasis and layout can guide attention towards the most important messages, proof points and win themes. Good design actively supports the story being told; poor design competes with it.
Making things easier for evaluators (and AI)
Perhaps the session's most memorable quote was ‘design is a navigation system for tired evaluators’. Evaluators are constantly asking themselves whether the submission demonstrates the criteria strongly enough to justify a high score—and design can help answer that question more quickly and confidently.
The session also highlighted the growing importance of designing for digital and AI-assisted reviews. Clear headings, structured content, native tables, captions and contextualised graphics improve how information is interpreted and extracted by both human evaluators and technology. Conversely, unclear headings, dense text, image-based tables and unexplained visuals can reduce understanding and weaken the effectiveness of otherwise strong content.
Sound advice
For writers looking to maximise impact with limited time, Cíara concluded with six practical priorities:
- Front-load value in headings
- Structure content clearly through chunking and alignment
- Emphasise only the most important information
- Maintain consistency in fonts and layouts
- Provide explicit context for graphics
- Remove unnecessary visual noise
The overarching takeaway for bid writers was simple but significant: design is not decoration. Every design choice should help evaluators notice, understand or evaluate something. When writing and design work together, proposals become easier to score, easier to remember and, ultimately, more likely to win.