With the virtual takeover of digital communication, it can be easy to overlook the timeless appeal of a solid document printed on high-quality paper emblazoned with your brand’s logo or letterhead. The truth is, as convenient as it is to simply send an email or offer a link to an online report or invoice, a physical document still generates far more impact. What’s more, if you have anything that you’re shipping, delivering, or handing out, ensuring you present a consistent look that shows off your brand can make you look more professional.
There is far more to good stationery design than a simple logo or letterhead attached to the top of an otherwise generic document. To be truly effective, your stationery design should deliver all of your important company details in a way that lets the reader know at a glance who this communication is from. This is your opportunity to showcase your business and reinforce your brand identity with your audience.
What makes for the most powerful design? Let’s explore!
How To Take Your Stationery From Basic To Brilliant
At its most basic, stationery design refers to the personal or professional branding that businesses or individuals incorporate into their various official communication assets from letterhead to memos, invoices, estimates, and more.
Each of these official documents are opportunities to present your company’s professionalism and integrity. Professional stationery design can boost your brand image in the eye of the recipient by displaying your attention to detail and commitment to quality.
A consistent stationery design communicates that your brand is professional, stable, and reliable. Sending out official company documents with a random array of fonts, colors, or logos is not only unprofessional, but it can also leave customers questioning just how “official” these documents really are.
Branding Guidelines
Before your artist can get started designing your custom stationery, you’ll want to provide them with a branding guide if you have one.
A brand guide is essential to establishing and displaying a consistent brand identity. Your branding guide is the go-to reference that tells designers and marketers which logo designs to use where, what type of imagery should be used in advertisements, and communications, as well as your preferred brand colors, fonts, typeface style, and more. Your designer will use the details in your brand guide to ensure that your stationery is a seamless extension of your brand identity.
If you haven’t created a branding guide yet, now is the perfect time to develop this important brand resource. (Flocksy designers can help out in this department as well).
Let’s explore the most crucial branding guide elements and how each will play a role in your stationery design.
1. Color Selection
Your brand color palette usually consists of one or two primary color options and several secondary colors used across all of your business marketing and communication assets. This could be the colors in your logo, the color scheme of your business website, your social media banner colors, product labeling colors, and more. Match your stationery design color selection to those used in other marketing and branding materials to unify your brand image.
2. Text
Font and typeface choices will also be crucial to your overall visual branding. When you’re coming up with the visual style and theme of your brand and the accompanying stationery, choosing your fonts will follow behind selecting your color palette.
3. Imagery
Strong imagery can make a bold statement, create a connection with viewers, and help make your brand more memorable. However, when it comes to using imagery as a part of your brand identity, a little goes a long way, and overzealous imagery can distract from your core message or design. This is especially true if you intend to include your chosen imagery in your stationery design
4. Logo
Your brand’s most recognizable visual element is typically your logo, and it should be adaptable to fit on all business stationery, no matter the background color, format, or message size. Many companies create several versions of their logo with each version designed for a specific background color or application. Your logo design should remain consistent, and appear in high-resolution no matter what document or online communication it is attached to. Consider creating a vector logo design, or having a designer create a vectorized version of your existing logo for maximum flexibility.
Bespoke Stationery Design On A Budget
Getting high-quality stationery designs for your brand shouldn’t be a challenge. But if you’re a smaller business, entrepreneur, or startup, professional graphic design could very well be outside your budget. Large companies frequently rely on an in-house team of graphic artists, but this is not generally an option during the first years of your business venture.
Good stationery design is important, and you need to be sure that each piece will positively reflect your brand and do it consistently across all formats. You also need to ensure that it’s rendered in the optimal resolution, format, and size. The complexity of flexible stationery design makes for a prohibitively challenging DIY task, and templated designs can’t deliver the personalized branding that you need.
You could go to a freelance marketplace and look for an artist to design your stationery for you. However, users of these communities often report frustration in navigating turnaround times and the revision process, and the quality can vary significantly from freelancer to freelancer.
The good news is that you can get professional stationery designed and formatted, alongside any other graphic, video, or copywriting assets, by simply subscribing to Flocksy’s flat-rate monthly service.
When you work with Flocksy, you’ll have access to a team of talented creative services professionals who can provide the designs you need for consistent, high-quality marketing materials, including stationery designs, social media posts, ads, logo designs, web page design, copywriting, video editing, web development, and so much more.
All in one place and all at one flat monthly rate with no contract.
Your entire team will be available through the Flocksy dashboard whenever you need them, and you’ll have a project manager ready to answer any questions that arise.
Did we mention 24 to 48 turnaround times on most projects? That is fast!
Getting Stationery Design At Flocksy
With Flocksy graphic design services, getting your stationery designs is simple.
Go to the intuitive dashboard, request your stationery designs from our graphics team, and you’ll have branded assets in whatever format you need in no time.
Follow these steps to get started:
One, select “Create new project” from the dashboard menu and choose the “graphic design project” option to launch the requests page. Two, look for “stationery design” among the several available options. Three, provide details about what you need in the description box and click start.
What should you include? You’ll want to give your artist your branding guide, including your color palette, imagery, fonts, and logo. You’ll also want to include any references you want them to use, the necessary info to display, the dimensions and type of stationery the designs will be going on, and any other important information you think your artist needs to do the job to your satisfaction.
With all this information, your designer can create stationery designs that look professional and allow you to present your brand and business in the best possible light. They’ll create a lasting impression on your target audience and offer brand consistency.
You can also work with the same designer over and over again, which will yield impressive results quickly, thanks to the strong working relationship you’ll develop with your team of artists and creative professionals. You can even work with us to create the content necessary for your memos, letters, news reports, and various other copywriting tasks.
Start your stationery design project today!