Most large and small businesses have their own unique brand. This includes their logo, packaging or any other kind of graphic. Writing a good business proposal often requires some thought whether to use graphics and color.

Research recommends using color and graphics except for those rare situations where the customer explicitly forbids it. Government bids are less common than it used to be. But, they need to be used with some judgment. Throwing in clip art or colorful logos will probably do more damage than good.

There are several factors that contribute to a good package: page layout, legibility of the font, use of white space. But, two of the more important tools you can use are color and graphics.

Research indicates that using color and graphics can increase the reader's interest, enhance retention, and improve comprehension. In fact, the results showed the following impact from color:

1. Increases comprehension up to 73% 2. Increases retention and recall 55% to 78% 3. Increases motivation up to 80% 4. Sells products and ideas 55% to 85% more effectively

If there's any bad, it's the fact that the research was sponsored by Hewlett Packard. They just might have a vested interest in getting business people to use more color printers.

But the group that actually did the research was an independent, third party, with good credibility. And those figures are consistent with other research done by publishers and educators.

A study conducted by the University of Minnesota found that the use of simple graphics increased the persuasiveness of a message by 47%. To measure the effect, they had a group of people read a passage of text and rate it for persuasiveness. Then they had another group rate the exact same text, only this time it included a graphic. The score jumped by 47%!

Why does this work? One factor is that some people learn more easily through graphics than they do through words. They are right-brain oriented. Also, some people are skimmers, and graphics are more likely to slow down the skimming process so that they absorb the content. Finally, sometimes graphics, particularly those based on statistical analysis or other quantified data, seem to carry more authority than mere words: for more people a bar chart showing the average annual temperature in three cities will be more convincing than similar data presented only in words.

Here are some ideas for using color and graphics to enhance your document: