When designing a letterhead, a lot of thought and detail should go into it. Professional Letterhead is often one of the first points of contact to potential customers, making it one of the most important printing collaterals in the business. Not only is it a form of professional correspondence, but it is a central part of your sales and marketing communications strategy.

Why It’s Important

It makes you seem easier to work with.

Not only do your potential customers want to know that a team is behind you, but they want to know they have access to a personalized contact. Customers don’t want things addressed from the company at large. This can be the difference between a customer who is loyal to the end and a customer who is always shopping for a better deal.

It increases credibility.

Personalized letterhead and stationery makes your business look professional. In using it, you’re able to create a relationship with your potential client based on trustworthiness and reliability. Furthermore, it shows that you’re an established business.

It improves your corporate image and strengthens brand awareness.

When a company has a high-quality letterhead, one immediately assumes that it will provide a high-quality product or service. And if you have an ongoing company image—including a logo, business card, letterhead, and envelopes—potential customers will notice the effort that you have put in. Furthermore, every company wants its customers to know that it offers the most affordable prices and the best service. Therefore, your letterhead needs to reflect this.

Letterhead Design Tips

Use the right software.

It’s important to make sure you’re using the right software. While Microsoft Word or Pages is acceptable for an ultra-simple layout, these will impose significant limitations when it comes to using graphics or more elaborate text layouts. Adobe InDesign is probably the most suitable program for creating custom layouts, as it is tailored towards creating more flexible publishing layouts. Illustrator is also a great alternative when creating a single-page layout.

Consider alignment and positioning.

In order to create a well thought out letterhead, it’s important to consider its sizing. The standard size for letterheads varies depending on the region. If you’re sending a letter in the United States or Canada, you’ll want to set your page to US Letter size, which is 8.5’’ x 11’’. You’ll also want to think about the grid of your layout.

While letterhead isn’t as intricate as a magazine cover, it still needs a simple grid structure (where you break up the page into square or rectangle sections). It’s helpful to look at other professional letterheads and observe the grids they employ. We also have a selection of free, certified letterhead templates for you to explore, ensuring an accurate production of your print job.

Adapt to your audience.

It’s important to take a moment to pause and consider who you’re sending your letter to. You want your letterhead to match the tone of your company and for that cohesion to resonate with your recipients. For example, a minimalist design is a perfect fit for a company that’s more traditional at its core.

If your letterhead vision isn’t coming together, you can always reach out to our graphic design team. We’ll be able to take your vision to the next level.
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In communication, it is important is to establish effective typographic hierarchy. According to educational website lynda.com, “typographic hierarchy is the way type is organized in order to indicate levels of importance to the view.”

Through this particular organizational system, one is able to combine both typographic and spatial elements to create the desired effect. In mixing different sizes, weights, and fonts in typeface or incorporating drastic colors or white space, one can impact a copy’s readability and usefulness.

There are three levels of typography that are used to create an effective hierarchy.

• Level One: This is viewed as the most important content or information: this should be the most prominent typographic element in your design. 
• Level Two: Generally, these elements help organize your design into sections or help group similar information together. While it shouldn’t stand out as much as your Level 1 type, it should clearly guide viewers through the different parts of the design.
• Level Three: When you have a text-heavy layout, this level of typography is typically the meat of the design. This is the copywriting text, where you get into your design’s message. Level 3 can vary in length—from a couple of paragraphs to a brief description; the primary concern is to ensure the content is easy to read as the font will be smaller.

In establishing typographic hierarchy, weight and typefaces are essential, particularly for headlines or subheads. In addition to decorative and bold typefaces, a very light typeface can also draw attention in the right setting.

Type Size

The viewer’s eye is first captivated by the largest-size type and then continues to other elements. With three levels of typography, the font size generally starts out biggest at the top (Level One), and it decreases in size as you move down the page. Since we read from left to right and top to bottom, the top-to-bottom hierarchy is the most natural way for readers to navigate information.

Color

Using color either attracts attention or de-emphasizes an element. Because colors carry their own meanings and associations, make sure that your color selection matches your brand and design purpose. Remember, an overuse of color can create visual confusion, which will undermine its effectiveness.

Case

Using capitalization sparingly can be an effective way to capture one’s attention and show importance, especially in headings or subheadings. However, all caps can be detrimental to readability, so using traditional uppercase and lowercase is preferable for lengthier text.

Placement and Setting

The placement of every element as well as the kerning, or space between and around them, is part of the overall hierarchy. Make sure to keep the most important information prominent. Place all related elements together and visually separate others to organize and structure the content.

Alignment

The way in which you align elements implies their relative level of significance. For example, centering conveys a sense of importance; it is most commonly used for titles, invitations, headlines, and announcements. On the other hand, running body copy generally calls for less focus than headings and subheadings; this is why is it generally set flush left, making it easier to read and comprehend.

White Space

Using negative or white space can create emphasis and draw attention to key content and elements. It is best not to overload every inch of space on a page because that can create excessive “visual noise,” fatiguing or confusing the reader.

An effective design offers visual clues to guide the observer through the content. Successful typographic hierarchy is crucial to communicating the intended message and maximizing the chances of the content being read and comprehended.

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We demand a lot from logos. Logos have to be simple while conveying the brand’s ethos so that it resonates with its consumers. In addition to being timeless and distinct, they must still be modern and follow contemporary graphic designs.

Below are three of the most influential rebrands from 2016.

SIMPLIFICATION: MASTERCARD

One big trend this year is logo simplification. Pressure from social media, current design preferences, and digital advertising currently dictate that logos need to be legible when small. This means that companies are investing billions to rebrand to simpler, flatter logos. While the logo’s interlocking circles remain, the horizontal lines framing the word “Mastercard” and sitting in the overlap have been removed and replaced by an orange shade, the end result of mixing primary colors yellow and red. The combination strives to cement “connectivity” and “seamlessness,” one of the company’s key brand messages.

Following the rebrand, research conducted by Mastercard showed that more than 80% of consumers still recognized the symbol without the inclusion of the name.

NEGATIVE SPACE: INSTAGRAM

Negative Space can provide a memorable way of calling to attention a company’s attributes. While Instagram kept its camera icon, they switched from a retro three-dimensional design to a flat, minimalist design. The use of negative space is key in their new design, as it outlines the camera lens and flashes against the rainbow gradient.

CLEAN LINES: TACO BELL

As companies are leaning more towards simplification, one of the first things to go has been and textures. Rather, larger businesses are opting for logos with clean, simple lines, as this makes building signage easier and more cost effective.

Taco Bell’s designers opted to pair down the logo, replacing its magenta, purple and yellow with a regal purple with subtle gradient shading. It utilizes white space to shape the bell.

Think your brand could use a refresh? Our design team would be happy to assist you with creating a new modern identity for your business. For more information about our logo design services click here or email design@primoprint.com.

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Adobe Illustrator CC has been a powerful design tool for quite some time, and the folks at Adobe continue to impress me with each new update that is released. One of my favorite new features from Adobe Creative Cloud is the ability to design faster with print templates for business cards, brochures and flyers, postcards, invites, posters, letterhead and more. In this blog, I’m going to feature some of my favorite designs currently included for free use with your Adobe CC membership. You can access these design files by opening the most current version of Adobe Illustrator CC and clicking on “Print” in the new document window.

Business Cards

This 2″ x 3.5″ “Simple Business Card” template designed by Owen Jones offers a clean design with 4 accent pattern swatches available. Various business card templates are available, but this one stood out as one of my favorites.

Flyers

This 8″ x 11.5″ “Record Player Flyer” template designed by Guuver has fully editable vector graphics as well as editable text. A variety of flyer design templates are available, but this one really impressed me.

Postcards

The “Bold Postcards Set” by Hands-On offers 4″ x 6″ postcard layouts with bleed. There are 4 available front designs and 4 available back designs to choose from. 

One of the awesome features of these templates is that they come with easy-to-understand instructions and the files are already set up to meet print requirements. The fonts used in the designs can all be synced from Typekit. The files are set up in CMYK color mode, and the artwork is at 300dpi and that includes bleed. The bleed for each file varies, but you can adjust the bleed to 0.0625″ on all four sides by clicking on file > document setup > bleed. So, you just need to fill in the information you would like to have printed in the provided fields and save for printing.

Check out the above designs and all the other available free templates by opening the latest version of Adobe Illustrator CC and clicking on “Print” in the new document window.

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