Redesigned bid book and infographic suite: polished, on-brand, and editable.
Destination DC's Conversion Sales & Services team relied on their bid book to win business, but the existing version no longer reflected the organization's current brand or met the standards their pitches demanded. This project was an opportunity to rebuild it from the ground up: a comprehensive PowerPoint redesign that would give the team a professional, modern toolkit they could own, edit, and present with confidence long after the project wrapped.
OVERVIEW
CREDITS
UI/UX Design → Yasmine Bouchlaghem
Marketing & Creative Direction → Jim McNulty
Marketing Strategy → Orlando Trott
INDUSTRY
Tourism
SERVICES
Powerpoint Presentation
Infographic Design
Project Management
STACK
PowerPoint
Illustrator
Photoshop
Workfront
CLIENT
Destination DC
Bid books are high-stakes documents. They represent an organization in competitive RFP situations where presentation quality directly influences outcomes. For Destination DC’s CSS team, the challenge was threefold: the existing design was outdated and misaligned with the current brand, the content needs had evolved beyond what the original templates could accommodate, and the team needed to be able to make edits independently, while following the brand guidelines and design layouts put in place.
The vertical slide format added a further layer of complexity. At 8.5x11", the slides needed to function as both presentation and print-ready PDF, which meant rethinking how content, imagery, and hierarchy were arranged within a format that works very differently from standard horizontal PowerPoint layouts.
THE CHALLENGE
THE STRATEGIC APPROACH
The project began with an introduction call followed by regular video meetings throughout, creating a consistent feedback loop between her, two creative directors, and multiple members of the Conversion Sales & Services team. Managing communication, timelines, and deliverables across that group was as much a part of her role as the design itself, and she led both from the start.
The redesign was strategically built on a master slide system to keep the files organized, protect core design elements from accidental edits, and make the templates genuinely usable by a non-design team. Every structural and visual decision was made with that end user in mind, ensuring the toolkit would hold up in practice.
THE DESIGN PROCESS
With the strategic foundation in place, she moved into the design of the slide system. The vertical format required rethinking every layout convention: content hierarchy, image placement, whitespace, and typography all had to be recalibrated for a format that prioritizes depth over width. Rather than adapting horizontal thinking to a vertical canvas, she approached each template as its own compositional problem, resolved on its own terms. The master slide architecture was built to give the CSS team maximum flexibility while protecting the design decisions that needed to stay consistent, with locked zones keeping branding elements in place and clearly defined editable areas giving the team intuitive spaces to work within.
The visual language was updated to reflect Destination DC's current branding, with a refreshed typography, and iconography system all documented in a dedicated appendix at the end of the file, serving as a built-in style guide for every future edit. She also designed a two-page infographic that functioned both as a standalone spread and as individual pages within the bid book. Before handoff, she walked the CSS team through the full file, covering the master slide structure, the appendix, and practical PowerPoint tips to help them hit the ground running independently.
THE OUTCOME
The CSS team walked away with a fully considered design system built around how they actually work. Pitches that once required workarounds and inconsistent formatting could now be assembled with confidence, knowing every slide would hold up visually regardless of who made the edits. The master slide structure and built-in appendix meant that design decisions were documented and protected, giving new team members the same starting point as those who had been part of the process from the beginning.
The bid book became a tool the team could be proud to put in front of a client, and a foundation they could build on independently for years to come. That kind of handoff, where the work stays useful long after the project closes, is what the entire process was designed to achieve.
A 133-slide PowerPoint system designed for independent use by a non-design team.
Received with enthusiasm by the CSS team, who left the handoff session equipped to work independently.
In the Client’s Words
“Yasmine, thank you for being there through this journey! That was one of the quickest, most efficient and creative projects of this scope we completed. It was in large part due to your style and grace under pressure. Thank you for bringing this project home for us and can’t wait to book business as a result.
Cheers to you!”
MELISSA A. RILEY
Senior Vice President, Convention Sales and Services | Destination DC
