While almost all business processes are conducted online nowadays, it’s important not to forget the medium on which business communication begin with: print. Even in the digital age, handing someone a fancy business card or sending them an important document on a corporate letterhead will leave a positive impression.
The best stationery design is that which does two things; delivers the intended information and accurately represents your brand. To achieve this ideal stationery design, you must take stock of your brand values, and the tried and tested stationery design guidelines.
We’ll get into more of that later, also check DesignRush for Best Stationery Print Designs, but first, let’s understand what stationery design is.
Stationery design is the process of crafting the look and feel of a enterprise’s or sole proprietor’s communication material. Personal and business stationery examples include letterheads, business cards, memos, etc.
Stationery design is integral to branding because it produces the templates used for important internal and external communication in a business. This includes official letters, invoices, memos, and company reports. When an organization has well-designed and on-brand stationery for all its communication, it creates a feeling of consistency, which positions you as a credible, organized, and professional brand among your customers.
Before the process of designing stationery is started, an essential resource needs to be made available is the brand kit.
The brand kit is a guide to your brand’s visual identity and typically consists of logos, images, layouts, colors, and text guidelines (fonts and sizes). Contents of the brand kit will determine the direction you follow with your stationery design.
Top Stationery Design Tips
There are no standard rules for stationery design, but these tips can help you come up with the right stationery design for your business.
1. Create a Mood Board
You have a design in mind. Chances are it’s already been done before, so there’s no need to tire yourself with endless sketches. Scan the web to find stationery designs that excite and inspire you, then add them to a folder that you can refer to when creating your design.
2. Design with Visual Hierarchy in Mind
Visual hierarchy in design is the principle of arranging elements in order of importance. The design of your stationery should guide the eyes of the reader from what you want them to see first up to the last element.
To achieve this, you can:
- Bold headlines and important points
- Use strong fonts and large font size
- Place important information or elements at the top
- Use graphics such as arrows to guide the reader along
- Apply scale to type, shapes, or other design elements that need relative emphasis. This emphasis can be enhanced by applying the right colors to the scaled elements. However, remember that not all fonts look good when scaled.
3. Color Scheme
For the color palette of your stationery design, pick 1-3 primary and 1-3 secondary colors that contrast and complement each other. To achieve variety but maintain consistency, use different tones of those colors or vary their transparency in different areas.
Remember to adjust font thickness and color when necessary so that contrast and readability are maintained.
4. Fonts
Choose fonts that match the character of your brand and the type of information to be carried in each specific stationery type. For example, a memo or letterhead can use hard-edged geometric fonts that display a serious mood, while a greeting card can use handwritten fonts that show a friendly mood.
5. Use Templates and Predesigned Elements
When you see a design or element (e.g., shapes, typography) that you like, instead of re-creating it from scratch, try to see if it’s already available on the web as an editable template or a downloadable element.
6. Quality is King
Many people would agree that it is pretty off-putting to encounter a brand that does the bare minimum regarding branding and design. For example, a brand that uses a jpeg logo on a large banner leading to a pixelated look.
The same applies to creative stationery design — your presentation determines how consumers view you. You must ensure your design elements, such as logos and images, appear clearly on the stationery. Also, avoid errors such as uneven margins and double spacing in your stationery layouts. They can make you look unprofessional.
Achieving quality designs may require investing in the best software or hiring experienced designers. Doing so may be more costly in the short term but will definitely help your brand perception in the long run.
7. Make it Recognizable
It’s easy to get sucked into trends with your design in a bid to look modern or edgy. However, remember that your stationery design is there to represent your brand.
To make your stationery recognizable to consumers:
- Use shapes and layout structures that match your brand’s messaging
- Use your brand colors as accent colors and background colors
8. Keep it Simple
As designer “Good design is obvious. Great design is transparent.” Your stationery design doesn’t need to be eccentric in order to be effective.
Actually design that is riddled with tons of elements and styles can make the reader feel that your brand is unprofessional. A clean simple design, if appropriate, gives a feeling of authority and confidence.
Here are three essential tips on achieving simple effective stationery design:
- Limit your typefaces – There are no explicit rules for the kind of fonts you should use for your stationery. However, it is a good idea to stick to two or three fonts throughout your material is a good idea. Just make sure they go well together.
You can even choose one font with multiple variations such as italic, bold, condensed, etc. This helps to achieve visual uniformity.
- Use the same design elements across different stationery – You can vary the color, tone, and size of the elements in different stationery to give a feeling of variety.
- Use white space – Proper use of white space can make a basic design classic.
9. Use the Right Materials
Finally, after you have the perfect company stationery design in digital format, it’s time to print your stationery. This is what people will hold in their hands, so you can’t drop the ball here.
Tips for printing stationery:
- Use the appropriate paper and printer – Don’t use regular printing paper for your business cards.
- Quality check the final product to make sure clarity and alignment are perfect.