When is a graphic not a good graphic?

We all know that old adage, a picture is worth a thousand words.

I am a huge advocate of using graphics in bids and proposals - either to explain something more clearly (particularly when we're dealing with word counts), or simply to break up the page. I've created bid responses in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and InDesign and I'll always try to include meaningful images and graphics.

I will also never understand those clients who say you can't include graphics - or, like one client I've dealt with, you can include graphics but they can't be included in an image (jpeg etc) format. That, my love, is not a graphic. Creating an image in Word is truly the seventh circle of Hell.

So yes, I love using graphics (and making sure they're captioned properly *tips cap to APMP*).

But there's the flip side. We should beware the client instruction "graphics do not count towards word counts".

In this case, word counts can push us all down the graphics, graphics and more graphics route. Which is absolutely fine if they're still used appropriately and do truly add something to the response.

So what about when the picture contains a thousand words; when there are more words crammed into the graphic than in the rest of the response?

At what point are you crossing the line from being ok and more clearly explaining something, to taking the mickey with the client's word count and risking being non-compliant. After all, they've put a word count in place for a reason - they certainly don't want the 500 words they decided to take off you, in tiny font on a diagram...

I've had many battles with SMEs around how many words are too many words on diagrams - and for me, it comes down to this. Is your diagram obviously more writing than picture? Too many words. Simple. Don't risk being non-compliant - it's not worth losing a bid over.