Effective business correspondence is highly essential whatever product or services your company is dealing with. Creating good impression either with customers, employees or business associates does not solely depend on the content of your letter. The first thing the receiver of your letter will notice is the physical aspects. Thus, creating a letterhead that showcases the image of your company is as important as the quality of your product and services as a whole.
Think of the letterhead as a type of contextual advertisement that works in a very subtle way. It means that you have to strategize how to present the letterhead as catchy but not too contrived as possible. You must not simply cram up information such as your name, business address, logo, etc. Remember that what you put on your letterhead must somehow reflect the quality and the target market of your product and services. So if you are a company that specializes in carpooling, your letterhead would surely look different from a company that sells music instruments. There are different ways to affect the image your company likes to project by playing along with the logo, color, typestyle, graphic art and the paper you are going to use.
For example, if the company has a logo, you might want to start the concept of your letterhead with it. To build up consistency, any type of publication from the company has to be graced by the company logo – from business cards to brochures. A logo is something that emphasizes the personality of the company. To base your letterhead with the same is to easily hit your goal of introducing your company. If you still don’t have a company logo, you might want to think about having one. It is an essential to your business.
You may also want to tint your logo with a signature color scheme. This should also have its own meaning based on the image of the company and should also serve as identification. Make sure that you are consistently using the same color scheme with other publications as well so that customers will easily associate the color with the company.
The typestyle you are going to use is also an integral consideration in creating your company’s letterhead. Remember that although you are already trying to sell the company profile, you still have to do it the subtlest possible way. Remember that the emphasis should still be on the letter itself and the letterhead must only serve as a background ambiance for the main content. So you might want to limit the typestyle of the letterhead to two.
Since another purpose of the letterhead is to provide information such as company name, address, and phone numbers, you have to make sure that they arrive readable to the receiver of the letter or else they would serve no purpose other than to clutter your letterhead.
This brings us to the decision of what exactly you have to include on your letterhead. Of course, company name, business address, phone numbers, and logo are always a given. But what about a slogan, tagline or probably, mission and vision? If these are something your company prides with, you might want to consider putting it on your letterhead especially if you also do that in other publications. It shall be the clearest way to explain your product and services without being too apparent about it.
Lastly, the paper you are going to use for your letterhead is also a very important consideration as it adds to our aim for company recognition. It greatly affects the image of the company with the weight, style and finish, and color. Plain paper for example can exude the image of formality while the glossier and interesting ones emphasize edginess. It’s in a matter of taste and again that depends on what image the company likes to project. Then again, just make sure that the paper is consistent with other publications in and out of the company.