4 designs to inspire your company letterhead

A good letterhead can really turn your business interactions around. It makes you instantly recognizable and adds a layer of professionalism for your clients.

The right business letterhead will also help you advertise your business and set yourself apart from the competition. Simply put, it gives you an opportunity to say something about your brand and put yourself out there, without coming across as too overbearing to your clients.

But what makes a good letterhead? Here are some designs and strategies that will help you perfect your company letterhead design.

1. Keep it simple

Remember that a letterhead is a delivery mechanism, and not an advertisement in itself.

Focus on your content and design something that’s unique, minimalistic, and visually appealing. Simpler is almost always better, and in this case, it’ll help you look a lot more professional.

This design from PosterMyWall’s church letterhead templates demonstrates this point perfectly. In terms of text, all you need is your company name, logo, location, and some contact information to make your letterhead look complete.

2. Use consistent colors and typography

The crux of a customized letterhead is making your company memorable for your clients, and the only way you can do that is through consistent branding.

Use consistent company colors throughout your letterhead. If your company colors are red and blue, these colors should be part of your letterhead design, especially at the borders.

Moreover, keep your typography consistent with your brand. Most brands stick with something mainstream and effective, like Helvetica. If you’re going for a more serious approach, you can use Times New Roman or Garamond. Choose your signature font wisely because you will have to stick with it.

If you’re using two fonts, make sure they complement each other. Here are some font pairings that go every well together:

Clarendon + League Gothic
Quando + Judson
Vidaloka + Roboto
Oswald + Raleway
Playfair + Cormorant Garamond

In this design by David Watson, lime green is used in the graphics, company name, and content. This type of color psychology embeds your company’s image in the mind of the client and immediately makes you memorable. The consistent typography for all the content also makes the design both professional and very easy on the eyes

3. Use unique imagery

This is where you can get creative and show your clients the spark that makes you unique. Make sure to not go overboard with imagery though. Too many visuals can distract from the other, more important content.

A good way to use imagery is to embed it on your page as a watermark, as the modern letterhead template below shows. The design also shows that you can repurpose your company logo and use that as a watermark or as part of the imagery of your design. If you don’t have a visual logo yet, browse through PosterMyWall and get logo templates free to customize and use.

You should also use the back of the letterhead page as a canvas to show your fun side without taking away from the seriousness of the main content.

4. Think about alignment and positioning

You need to align your text and visuals according to the medium you’re sending your letterhead on.

For instance, if you’re printing out your letterhead, you’ll need to use brighter, contrasting colors to make them more visible on the page. Similarly, if you’re emailing the letterhead, you should use higher quality graphics.

Another important point to consider is text hierarchy, as shown in this letterhead template. Your name or logo should be bigger than the rest of your content. However, do not use more than two different font sizes.