Quick Tips: Your Professional Letterhead System
BY WORDPRENEUR
Keep it Very Simple. Design should be simple, clean and uncluttered. Same goes for paper color choice. In fact, stick to whites and light creams.
Paper. Nothing wrong with the basic 20# bond coupled with a good professional letterhead design. Consider using a heavier paper for a more “pro” harder-to-ignore feel.
Go with premium paper, if you can (or want) to afford it; we do. But usually, premium = textured, so, if you’re going to be printing your letterhead yourself with your laser or inkjet, make sure the paper you select works with your equipment (especially if you plan to use matching envelopes). Ask your paper source for their advice/recommendation.
In-House Printing. Today’s laser and inkjet printers are more than capable of producing professional letterhead; in fact, many printshops actually use similar machines to do “short run” jobs, like your letterhead system!
So, instead of spending bucks to get a batch of letterhead and envelopes produced at your local printshop, put the money instead on premium paper and having a designer create a custom letterhead template for you (to use with, say, Microsoft Word).
Sources. Your local office supply superstore is a good source. Staples and OfficeDepot, for example, have a good selection of moderately priced “premium” letterhead systems. The packaging usually tells you whether the paper works with your laser/inkjet or not.
Besides the superstore sites, there are lots of online specialty paper sources you can try. Two to check out are:
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2 Responses to “Quick Tips: Your Professional Letterhead System”
By Joe on Nov 13, 2006 | Reply
I’ve found that Vistaprint gives you flexibility to create simple header graphics and decent price for letterhead.
Make sure you don’t let your graphics, contact info. etc. come too far down the page, spoken from experience.
By Wordpreneur on Nov 13, 2006 | Reply
Thanks for the good advice, Joe.
Here’s a link to VistaPrint.