How to Make Personalized Business Stationery in 5 Easy Steps
Not every business owner knows how to make personalized business stationery that best represents the brand or business. Even so, there are accepted guidelines for how to design business stationery that looks professional.
In this post, our Phoenix printers at PRI Graphics offer 5 easy-to-do tips on how to make personalized business stationery. Follow these helpful guidelines to make a compelling design that will differentiate you from your competition.
1. Include Your Logo On All Business Stationery
Every business needs a logo, an attractive creative expression that sums up your core services and/or products. Logo design should be done by a professional, preferably using a vector drawing program that creates scalable images for use in an assortment of business stationery projects.
A vector rendered company logo will reproduce accurately no matter what size or what type of material it is being printed on. Whether printed on fax, a white background, a solid background or printed in conjunction with other images, the logo will always look the same. Your company logo needs to be identifiable no matter where or how it is used.
2. Best Font for Personalized Business Stationery
There are so many fonts available and choosing the right font for use in your business can be tricky.
We recommend that you consult with one of our in-house graphic designers. Your graphic designer will assist you on how to make personalized business stationery that works. They will help you pick out the right type of font for your business, one that will remain legible no matter what size it is printed.
Like your company logo, your font choice will remain consistent across all stationery and other company materials. Choosing the correct font for business stationery may take some time but it will be worth it.
SERIF FONTS — This is the type of text that has little tails on the ends of letters. Although they may look good in larger font size (16 points or larger for instance) they may not be as legible when printed small (such as 8 points or smaller) like on business cards.
SAN SERIF FONTS — This is a clean font with no “tails.” San serif fonts are more legible no matter how small the font is printed so it may be a better choice.
3. Leave White Space
Messages stand out better if you utilize white space as a design element. White space de-clutters and allows room-to-breathe. It can also emphasize specific areas with little effort. Good use of white space in personalized business stationery will help present your business in a more professional manner.
4. Printing Business Stationery
If you’re going to print business stationery on your office printer, make sure your design will accommodate any limitations of the printer. There is no point designing personalized business stationery with full bleeds (where the ink goes to the edge of the paper) if your printer is not capable of this output. It’s also difficult to attain color consistency with office printers.
Having your personalized business stationery professionally printed is always recommended. Professionally printed business stationery will ensure color consistency and uniformity no matter what type (or weight) of paper or card stock.
5. Other Business Stationery Elements to Consider
Today, most businesses have a stronger online presence. That means your company logo and your personalized business stationery design must also transfer well to all digital formats, including small-screened mobile devices and for social media.
From your logo to your font choice, design layout, and corporate colors, everything must be scalable and must transfer accurately.
While today’s technology allows many small companies to design and create affordable business stationery in-house, this may not always be best for your business. Graphic designers are professionals with years of experience. We recommend having your company logo and personalized business stationery professionally designed and printed, whether in hard copy or through digital mediums.
About PRI Graphics
PRI Graphics is a family-owned Arizona printing company with printing facilities in Phoenix , AZ. We offer our clients full in-house graphic design and printing services in black and white and in full color. We can help you with all your CAD printing, large format printing, and digital printing needs.
If you have any other questions about how to make personalized business stationery, or about graphic design or stationery printing, please contact us or send us an email.
We can also be reached by phone at 602-393-3131 or call us toll-free at 1-877-409-8889 and we’ll be happy to assist you.
Adobe has additional good information in their article entitled, The Constraints of Stationery – An Opportunity to be Unique.