When it comes to designing your letterhead and envelope its a good idea to design your business card at the same time. This will enable you to create consistent branding for your company and ensure that your business card, letterhead & envelope will all look like they belong together; If you give someone a business card and later send a letter, you want those pieces to reinforce each other.

Envelope size

The standard business envelope is 9 x 4 Inches. It’s called a #10 envelope. The European size is 110mm x 220mm, and it’s called a C4 envelope. Whilst, however these are the standard sizes, nothing is stopping you from using a different size envelope which more suits the type of mail your company often needs to send. As long as your envelopes are designed with the same brand as the rest of your stationary, size doesnt really make any difference.

Create a focal point

One element should be dominant, and it should be dominant in the same way on both the letterhead and the envelope (and the business card). On most corporate identity materials, the logo if often the focal point, but if you have any other brand related element which suits more as a focal point, be sure to use that.

Just as an example, take a look at the stationary for one of my businesses, DigitalTRAX. Whilst the logo is one of the main elements on all stationary, you will notice that the real focal point is the blue tint, and is consistent across all of the business branding materials, including adverts, stationary, cars, and even clothing.

Alignment

Choose one alignment for your stationery! Don’t center something across the top and then put the rest of the text flush left. Be brave-try flush right down the side with lots of line spacing. Try setting your company name in huge letters across the top. Try placing your logo (or a piece of it) huge and light, maybe as a shadow beneath the area where you will type (as Ive done with my stationary for DigitalTrax above). On the letterhead, make sure to arrange the elements so when you type the actual letter, the text fits neatly into the design of the stationery.

Second page

If you can afford to make a second page to your stationary, take a small element that appears on your first page and use it all by itself on a second page. If you are planning to print, let’s say, 1,000 letterheads, you can usually ask the printer to print something like 800 of the first page and 200 of the second page. Even if you don’t plan to print a second page, ask the printer  for several hundred blank sheets of the same paper so you have something to write longer letters on.

Faxing and copying

If you ever plan to send your letterhead through fax or copy machines, don’t choose a dark paper or one that has lots of speckles in it. Also avoid large areas of dark ink, reverse type, or tiny type that will get lost in the process. If you do a lot of faxing, you might want to create two versions of your letterhead-one for print and one for fax.

So as you can see, with a little thought and careful consideration in planning, creating corporate identity you can be proud of isnt that difficult. For more information on designing with your companies brand in mind checkout Tips For Effective Business Card Design, and Create Consistent Branding.

Popularity: 100% [?]

Business cards can be a challenge to design because you usually need to pack a lot of information into a small space. And the amount of information you put on a business card has been growing.

In addition to the standard address and phone number, now you probably need  to include information such as your mobile number, fax number, email address, and if you have a web site (which you should), your web address.

Format

Your first choice is whether to work with a horizontal format or a vertical one. Just because most cards are horizontal doesn’t mean they have to be. Very often the information fits better in a vertical layout, especially when we have so many pieces of information to include on such a little card. Experiment with both vertical and horizontal layouts, and choose the one that works best for the information you have on your card.

Type size

One of the biggest problems with business cards designed by new designers is the type size. It’s usually too big. Even the  10-or-11-point type we read in books looks horsey on a small card And 12-point type looks downright dorky. I know it’s difficult at first to use 9 or even 8 or 7-point type, but look at the business cards you’ve collected. Pick out three that look the most professional and sophisticated. They don’t use 12-point type. Keep in mind that a business card is not a book, a brochure, or even an ad - a business card contains information that a client only needs to look at for a couple of seconds. Sometimes the overall, sophisticated effect of the card’s design is actually more important than making the type big enough for your great-grandmother to read easily.

Be Consistent with Brand Materials

If you plan to create a letterhead and matching envelopes, you really need to design all three pieces at once. The entire package of business cards, letterhead, and envelopes should present a consistent brand Image to clients and customers.

There really are some amazing business card designs out there today, and with so many businesses vying for your customers attention, you really need to find a way to stand out from the crowd. Take a look at a few ways these businesses have done just that in Ivan’s post over at CreativeBits.Org - Best Ever Business Card Designs.

Popularity: 38% [?]

A brand is the means by which your company or organization is identified. This can be in the form of its name, such as IBM, or its memorable logo, or a slogan, such as “It’s the real thing’’, which most readers will know is Coca-Cola.

Depending upon the way your site—or the site you’re working on for someone else is set up in terms of trademark and other legal aspects, it may fall to you to ensure that the sites designer implements and makes sure the company’s brand is well-defined and maintained throughout the site. Being consistent with branding is key in defining and maintaining a brand identity.

For trademarked names, logos, and slogans, in the United States, it is up to the holder of the mark to ensure its strength and safety. This is one reason some companies, such as Disney, are notoriously litigious when it comes to anyone trying to mess with their brand materials.

If it’s up to you to help the client define the brand for his or her Web site, here are some time-honored tips to help:

• Consider a brand name that has existing and related meaning to your goods or services. A well-known example of this is Nike, a brand known worldwide. Nike is the Greek Goddess of Victory, a perfect choice for athletic goods.

• Build your visuals based on the symbology of your brand. Images should reinforce the message behind the brand, not dilute it in any way.

• Write slogans that are catchy and relevant.

• Integrate your strategies into the long-term Web site plan.

• Test early. If the brand name, images, or slogans do not test well early in the design process, it may be time to go back to the drawing board and gain more insight as to why.

• Be sure to place your branding consistently throughout your site. The company logo should appear on every page, as should any slogans. Imagery related to the brand should be used consistently, too.

One last tip. Many designers create a larger logo for the home page, and use a smaller logo on subsequent pages. Linking logos on subsequent pages to the home pages is also very common; many people expect the websites logo to link back to the home page, so its pretty much a recommended practice.

Do you have any tips or experiences when it comes to ensuring a brand is used consistently and ensuring a brand is implemented effectively onto the web?  Tell us your views by leaving a comment below.

Popularity: 31% [?]

With the introduction of technologies such as style sheets and Dynamic HTML, people without a sense of design have even more opportunities to create a site that looks simply awful.

Probably the best rule in web design to follow at all times is this: Keep the design of each page as simple as possible. Reduce the number of elements (images, headings, and rule lines) and make sure that visitors’ eyes are drawn to the most important parts of the page first.

When you’re reading a book, each page or section usually has the same layout. The page numbers are placed where you expect them, and the first word on each page starts in the same place.

The same sort of consistent layout works equally well on web pages. Having a single look and feel for each page on your website is comforting to your visitors. After two or three pages, they’ll know what the elements of each page are and where to find them.

Consistent layout can include the following:

• Consistent page elements. If you use second-level headings on one page to indicate major topics, use second-level headings for major topics on all your pages. If you have a heading and a rule line at the top of your page, use that same layout on all your pages.
• Consistent forms of navigation. Put your navigation menus in the same place on every page (usually the top or the side of the page, or even both), and use the same number of them. If you’re going to use navigation icons, make sure that you use the same icons in the same order for every page.
• The use of external style sheets. If you want to stick to pure HTML 4.01 (or XHTML 1.0), you can create a master style sheet that defines background properties, text and link colors, font selections and sizes, margins, and more. The appearance of your pages maintains consistency throughout your site.

If you create a consistent design, your visitors can find the information they need and navigate through your pages without having to stop at every page and try to find where certain elements are located. In conclusion, if your web visitors can find everything they need without having to think too hard about where to find things, they will more than likely return to your web page in the future. Make it complicated for them, and you’ll never see them again.

Popularity: 9% [?]