Explore the intricate aspects of creating an engineering proposal for Parks and Dwell. This article delves deep into the process, from planning and structuring the proposal to adding design elements, images, and text content.
Key Insights
- The article goes through the step-by-step process of creating a Parks and Dwell engineering proposal, which includes opening and organizing relevant materials, designing the cover, establishing a file system, and configuring workspace settings.
- Attention to detail is emphasized, such as adding guides for proper alignment, creating text frames for titles and submission details, and ensuring that all the necessary materials are within reach.
- The article also highlights the importance of styling and rendering the proposal professionally, making sure to maintain a clean and organized layout throughout the document.
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In this video, we're going to begin working on our next project, our Parks and Dwell Engineering Proposal. So let's begin first by opening up our folder with all of our Parks and Dwell Engineering materials.
From here, we can see a whole lot of materials that we're going to be utilizing for this next proposal project. And if we go to the bottom here and open up our Request for Proposal, we can look at the materials we'll need. Essentially, in this situation, throughout Lesson Three and Four, we're going to be responding to a Request for Proposal from our engineering company.
So the County of St. James Department of Public Works is essentially requesting materials from us that we need to design a proposal for. Within here, we can see all of the different materials that they're requesting. We'll have details of where to send it, and we'll include items such as a cover letter and tabbing of different sections with materials that'll be appropriate for this proposal.
We can now close this out, and if we go into our Parks Dwell Proposal sample from our Parks and Dwell folder, we can view a sample of the project that we'll be creating throughout Lessons Three and Four. As we can see here, we have a nice cover, we have our submitted details, some images, and if we want to view this together, we can do so by going to Page Preview and we can view the pages together. Here, we can see we have our cover letter, firm profile, and all of the various materials that we'll need for this project.
Within this project, we have multiple pages that we're going to be creating, so let's get to work. Feel free to print this file out if you'd prefer to leave it next to your computer and be able to use it as a reference. We'll close this out, and let's begin by creating a file.
Go into File, New, Document, and from here, since we're going to be printing it, let's go to Print, and we're going to be utilizing the Letter format. Next, let's rename our file, and in this case, we're going to be titling it “Parks and Dwell Proposal.” Next, let's change up our units to inches since we'll be working in inches.
We'll turn Facing Pages on, and let's increase the pages from 1 to 20. We scroll down here, we'll maintain just one column for our pages, and for our margins, we can leave this at 0.5. Next, let's hit Create. From here, we'll see our first page, and if we scroll down, we'll see that we have multiple spreads below.
So before we begin, let's actually reset our workspace. Go into VDCI and let's simply select Reset VDCI. This way, we're all working with the same workspace and back to our default settings.
From here, let's begin designing the cover of our proposal. In order to do this, we can look at our sample and see what we're working on. In this case, let's start by adding some guides.
I'd like to add a guide one inch from the bottom, so we'll leave it right at 10 inches and release, and then let's add a nice big image right here on top. To do this, we'll grab a guide and release it right at 4 inches. Next, we're going to have where we're submitting it to and
Address and important information on the left-hand side, and on the right, we'll have an image and the title.
So let's drag another guide over here and we'll leave that at 3 inches. From here, we've got our photo up top with our Parks and Dwell name. We've got the text on the left side, a bar across the bottom, and we'll have our title and another photo.
So let's begin first by adding in our photo or our Image Frames. We'll utilize our Rectangular Frame Tool, and let's just drag a frame here right on top and down here towards the bottom. We'll leave an image there.
Next, I always like to add the text that I'm adding to the page before I do too much stylizing, so we'll do that by utilizing our Type Tool. And the first thing we're going to want to add is our title up top of “Parks and Dwell.” Next, we're going to add another frame here on the left-hand side, and in this, we're going to add our Submitted To details as well as our Submitted By details. If we open up our folder and open the Parks and Dwell Engineering folder, we'll open up the Request for Proposal.
From here, this will give us the information that we need to know where to submit it to. If we scroll down here, we'll look through this information, and we'll see right here that the submission of proposals needs to go to this address. So let's copy this right here, hitting CTRL+C on the keyboard, and going back into our file now, we can simply type “Submitted To, ” and we'll hit CTRL+V to paste the details.
Next, we're going to do “Submitted By, ” so we'll type in “Submitted By, ” and in this case, it's going to be “Parks and Dwell Construction.” Below this, we'll have the address as well. Feel free to make a fun address up in this case, and finally, we're going to add the date.
Again, feel free to add whatever date you'd prefer or choose a date that's special to you. As our last text element here, we're going to add the title of this proposal. So let's create a Text Frame, and we're simply going to type out “Department of Public Works Proposal.”
From here, we now have all of the main elements of this page. However, we obviously need to do a little bit of styling. So for now, let's save our work, hitting CTRL+S on the keyboard to save, and in this case, we're going to give it the same title that we've already provided, “Parks and Dwell Proposal, ” and we'll save it right in our folder, hitting Save.
From here, we now have the structure, and in the next video, we're going to begin stylizing as well as bringing all of our materials into InDesign. See you there!