No matter what your business is, you want your business stationery to deliver the message that, first and foremost, you are a professional. Professionally printed, coordinated business stationery delivers that message directly and to the point. When everything from your business cards to your letterhead to your invoices mirrors the same design and quality, you establish your company as truly professional.
Define your Message
There are generally three types of messages to convey with professional business stationery:
Line of business, industry. You may be a young company or maybe you’ve been in business 50 years, but your company is not exactly a household name. Define your business with personalized stationery that communicates the industry you are in and what you do. If you are a home builder, you could incorporate a construction motif both in your logo and in the color of the paper and inks. Maybe you are a fashion retailer; communicate that with the use of some fashion-forward colors or an apparel-like graphic element. Authority, established. You may be the authority in your business or maybe you are trying to become one. Either way, send the clear message that you are a professional, established business with tasteful personalized business stationery. There are a host of classic, minimalist, modern and corporate looks that will make an authority statement. Bottom line, you don’t want to be an investment banker sending a business note on your daughter’s pink and green polka dot stationery. Cutting edge, technology, entrepreneurial. Maybe you are looking for an image other than the standard corporate navy blue and gray color palette. Make a statement with a cutting-edge contemporary design that evokes the 21st century. Elements that make a design more contemporary include the use of non-traditional colors or non-traditional placement of your company logo and address. For instance, instead of having your information top and center, have it placed in the lower right hand third of the page. A technology graphic theme also communicates a forward-looking business culture. If you’re an entrepreneur who needs to scream energy, go for a bold design with a dark or bright color and create the illusion of movement in your graphic elements.
Design for Consistency
There is more to a coordinated appearance than just placing your logo at the top of the page or in the upper left hand corner of a label. Every design element of every piece of stationery should coordinate to present a polished image that is unmistakably your own. That means the font you choose and size, typestyle and color needs to be consistent. Don’t italicize the return address on your mailing envelope when your letterhead uses bold, no italics for your business address. Choose one typeface and stick to it. The major choice is whether to use a serif or sans serif font. Some people think of serif fonts as more traditional and sans serif as more contemporary. Both are equally professional — what matters most is using the font correctly throughout every piece of your business stationery and communications.
Every time a customer or contact sees a piece of paper from your office, they should immediately recognize that it came from your office. That is what image is all about — creating an impression and then making certain that every time your company is seen, it fits that message. That means that all of your stationery, from business cards to monthly invoices, carries common design elements. Business stationery includes:
Business and correspondence cards Both standard company and personalized executive letterhead Thank-you notes with the company logo Memo pads and internal routing slips Envelopes in various sizes Postcards and promotional mailers Anything your customers see — invoices, receipts, shipping labels, etc.
Leverage your Supplier
One of the best ways to ensure that your business image is consistent across your entire suite of office and business stationery is to order it all from the same source. When you source all of your custom business stationery from one supplier, you can be certain of the quality and the consistency of all your stationery products. Make sure your supplier has control of their product quality — some sellers are really 3rd-party outsourcers who use a different manufacturer or supplier for each job, based on low price. These businesses usually produce spotty quality and inconsistent service at best. Even if they may look like they’re saving you a few bucks, it will cost you more in the end. You need someone who is reliable all the time, but perhaps more importantly, able to come through on short notice for the occasional office emergency when somebody forgot to order more envelopes. Some suppliers even offer an online inventory management system that will send you reorder reminders based on your past order history.
Leverage every resource available to your business to build your professional image with personalized business stationery. Personalized stationery is probably the number one thing you can do to present a professional and competent business image to your customers and the public.