Letterhead can say a lot about your company or organization. Think of how you perceive a letter written on plain white paper versus a letter written on beautifully designed letterhead. Who knew a piece of paper could say so much? Your letterhead is yet another marketing opportunity where you can showcase and emphasize your brand, so don’t neglect it or the importance of it looking good!
Whether your letterhead is the first impression and interaction a customer has with your brand, or if it’s used to reinforce your brand, it needs to not only look good, but also to lend credibility to the words on the paper and to your company itself.
Here are a few tips for creating successful letterhead:
- Keep it simple. The design of your letterhead should be powerful and effective, but also as simple as possible. Your letterhead is the vehicle that is delivering the content on the page and therefore it should enhance the content, not detract from it.
- Use color sparingly. As with keeping the design simple, use color sparingly on letterhead to help to enhance the content and not detract from it. You should use color on your letterhead to reinforce your branding and to draw attention to specific areas of the design.
- Use professional design software. Don’t use MS Word to design your letterhead. Please! It is best to use professional layout software like Adobe Illustrator or InDesign for letterhead design.
- Include the critical information to promote your brand. Decide what information is critical & be sure to include it in your letterhead design: company name and/or logo, your address, telephone, email address and website are standard pieces of information on letterhead. Size and space the information according to it’s importance.
- Use your letterhead to enhance your brand! Be sure that your letterhead represents your brand. This includes using your logo (of course!), but also the colors, imagery, tagline(s), information, and fonts.
