July 22, 2011

Business Stationery 2.0

A long time ago, branding was all about stationery. Businesses had letterhead, business cards, a variety of envelopes, checks, invoices, estimates, credit memos… all printed to make a matching set of materials for everyday use. The purpose of all that stuff with logos was to present a unified front—cohesive group of materials that communicated personality, professionalism and pride in what the business did.

No longer. When was the last time you loaded a sheet of letterhead in your printer? And second sheets? Those seem to have forever disappeared. Even business cards last longer than they used to and a box of envelopes takes twice the time to use up. Invoices get emailed along with most other daily business communications. It’s great to rid the world of all that extra paper, but the purpose of a consistent look and feel hasn’t disappeared. Organizations still need to have a cohesive group of materials that communicate personality, professionalism and pride. We’ve just replaced the paper with digital documents. Offices used to keep a closet full of branded paper to have at the ready. We still need the stuff, but we don’t need the closet. Below is a list of digital files. If you have these handy, you’ll be more consistent with your communications and more efficient in what you do:

Email Template
Create a signature with your contact information. Avoid attaching graphics or backgrounds to email; they make strings of emails very messy. 

Word Templates
When an email just won’t do, use a professionally designed Word template. Create PDFs of your Word files before you send them out for two key reasons: Word files look different on different computers, often making key information hard to find, and Word fades headers and footers, making your logo and contact information dull and in the background. PDFs look the same no matter what. You can create Word templates for anything, but a simple toolkit would include a letterhead template, proposal template and flyer template. When you are done editing your template, you can usually create a PDF by going to Print and then Save as PDF.

Logos 
Keep several logos in a variety of formats convenient for emailing to people who need them. A basic group of logos would include:
  • A low-resolution jpg, gif or png for web use
  • An eps or ai file for print and for designers
  • A square icon to use on Twitter, Facebook, Basecamp, or for commenting on blogs. Have your designer create a logo-related graphic that represents your organization in a 16 or 24 pixel square.
  • Keep your font files handy. If someone has offered to create an ad for your organization, you can provide your branding guidelines, logo and fonts.
Boilerplate File
Have your Mission, Vision, Values and any other common copy you use in a file that you can copy and paste from. No need to search or rewrite the stuff every time you need it.

Technology has allowed us to relinquish control in favor of flexibility and getting the job done. Digital templates give you everything you need at the ready so you don’t have to re-enter information each time you communicate. You’ll still need to print envelopes and business cards; hand-written thank you notes never go out of style. But if you can make it digital, make it digital, and keep it handy.