Letterhead Design

With the unusual way I have designed my envelopes and letter shape, I thought it would be an important stage to design the layout of the content itself. Therefore I studied some grid layouts (https://akbrodie.wordpress.com/2014/12/29/understanding-grids/) and started to mockup a few of my own. I knew that using the same colour across all the promotional material I produced was important, so I decided again, to use purple, I knew from the traditional letter, and the legal requirements of any business that sends a letter that it was important to include contact details on the letter, so I decided to use the way I had folder the paper to change the layout. I created a blank space on the left to begin with so that the main content was on the right, this is like a letter I found during my research and you can see this here:

You can see my first design is similar but removes the box from the left, it is below. I found by having the content of the letter so far across the page just seemed unbalanced so I scrapped it.

To create a design much more like the one I was inspired by I moved the informational section to the left but maintained the width of the column since from my previously research I knew it was important that the line width wasn’t too long as it would be easier to read. Also, I disliked the text being so close to the left  as I feel it didn’t work with what I’ve learnt from my research about white space and overall layout so I moved it over a bit to the right, you can see this edition below.

Then I started to consider the experience of opening the letter and taking the letter out of the envelope, I folded the paper into thirds, the way I was planning on doing, and realised the section I created on the front of the letter wasn’t quite a third so I changed that to be exactly one third. Next placed the letter in the envelope and pulled it out as if I was opening it fore the first time, I visualised my logo on the centre and coloured sections on the thirds above and below. My logo is purple and I wanted to have a consistency across my branding therefore I decided to have the coloured sections in purple too, this mean’t I had to move the logo on the letter because it didn’t stand out against the new background colour.

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Letterhead Research

To create a strong, professional brand, I will need to apply the same visual identity to all of the products that I produce. Materials used in letterheads are very important, there are lots of types and thickness of paper that can be used depending on style and design of the actual letter. I spoke to a company Marqetspace, they mass produce trade printing from business cards to letterheads to flyers and asked them to send me examples of the different types of paper that they print on. A couple of things i learnt from actually receiving the products were that thickness generally provides the user with a sense of quality and luxury while the opposite is said for the thinner pieces of paper.

You can see images of all the letterheads I looked at here;

Given that the thickness gives the paper a certain quality the “120gsm CONQUEROR” has a really nice texture but I also believe that you wouldn’t want to go below 100gsm if you don’t want to loose that ‘quality’ feel. Also the fact we are in an age where we all have to consider the environment we live in it would also make your company stand above e it’s competitors if you showed that you care, one way of doing this would be to use the “100gsm RECYCLED” letterhead. Something else to consider when choosing the thickness of the letterhead would be the capabilities of the printer you used to print on the letterheads, as you need paper that would not jam in the printer. Yet another consideration of letterheads is the legal requirements as a business you are required to provide your name, the registered company name, contact number and address.

From my research about good and bad letterheads it is reasonably easy to state the plain white ones that the average company such as a bank send are considered to be the worst, while unusual shapes and sizes are seen as better design. Something I noted from the good designs is that they have all redesigned the envelope as well as the actual letter itself. You can actually see this in these two images below, they have actually redesigned the entire concept of sending out material to their customers.

I think I like these two designs and will actually use them to create my own designs when it comes to making my mockups. Something I noted earlier was to have consistency across all of the material I produce, the pieces below have actually got a similar colour scheme and design processes behind them so that as a user you know they relate to the same company.

I looked at the consistency across the portfolio of items below and I noted that it is very similar to what I was going aim for, the colours fall in line with my logo design and would work perfectly. I may consider this when making my designs.

Another consideration for the letter is the eligibility of the content, I need to make sure the content of my letter is easily readable. Firstly, contrast of colour is something I really need to to focus on, my logo is a black to light purple gradient with light purple text, therefore to get the contrast for my type and logo design to stand out on the page i need to consider the colours my letter and envelope will come in. Line height, spacing and length are all factors that can impact the readability of the page, as discussed in this article (http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0071161), dyslexic people find it easier to read shorter lines, so this is something I must consider when creating the letter layout. A larger line height is better because it improves the scannability which is something else I will need to consider when devising the layout of the letter because it allows the reader to flow through the content much easier by guiding them with the layout of the text.  At the same time though I don’t want too much text on the page so it is important to have a substantial amount of white space on the page as well, by using white space in between paragraphs it makes the content more scannable. Using grid layouts is going to be very important when creating the layout of the letters and their content and this is something I am going to examine in another post.

I really like the letterhead below because it uses flat colours (something that very fashionable in design right now) to separate the company information and the personalised information for the customer.

In a sense from the name ‘formal letter’ they should be simple and boring, but that is not the case by adding interest to the layout sets you apart from the competition. Making use of the back side of the paper is just important as it again adds interest to your letter, you can see below there are a couple of examples that take advantage of the free space.

References:

http://www.marqetspace.co.uk/home/

http://startups.co.uk/letterhead-legal-requirements-your-business-needs-to-follow/

http://www.peppermintprint.co.uk/products/letterheads/

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0071161

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/03/18/10-principles-for-readable-web-typography/

Wyke Printers company visit

To understand the process of creating a physical hand out like a business card or letterhead, I found it was vital to research the companies that produce these things. I organised a visit to G.F. Smith, the paper manufacturer and Wyke Printers.

One of the first things I learnt when being showed around Wyke Printers was about the ‘blueprint’, a paper cutout of anything that needs to be folded and cut to create a certain shape. The photo below shows the blueprint design for a folder that the company Lincat are paying Wyke printing for. You can see the design has dotted lines for folds and hard lines to be cut. The layout of the content is shown as it would be so that should there be any mistakes, they can be easily resolved. There are many machines in the building that do lot’s of different jobs, things like stapling books together, printing, checking colour levels  etc.

Along the top of each piece of paper printed, there is a set of colour codes which are read by the computer system, this will determine whether each machine has the correct amount of each colour in it. Wyke use CMYK (reason for this has been mentioned in previous research). You can see the numbers on the machine actually match up to the different colour sets on the paper.

Finally I shared the initial ideas for my self promotion material, and was shown the piece of equipment you can see below, if I was to create my designs on a mass scale, I would use a printing press, this basically is laid out like the blueprint you can see at the beginning of this post and will make the relevant scores and cuts on the paper, this saves time and money. Then all that needs to happen is the relevant folds, glue and and then they are shipped to the customer. This is obviously ideal and has shaped the way I will arrange my designs. This is the press I was shown: