Tips For Choosing Your Business Stationery
Your stationery can quickly become the face of your business. Your business cards and letterheads all give people a specific impression of your business when they first see them. Many new businesses place a huge amount of focus on developing their color schemes, logos etc. I recently saw a marketing exec spend an entire month approving fonts, typefaces and layouts.
There's an important question to ask yourself first before you go any further:
Do you actually need stationery?
What I mean by this is will you need to distribute business cards and send postal items requiring the use of a compliment slip, printed envelope or letterhead? Business stationery is far from cheap so this is a very relevant question to ask yourself before you go spending a fortune on paper and printing. Ego should always take second place to profit in any business so don't spend thousands of dollars just because you think you should have the best business cards on the planet.
If you're in a people facing business and/or you decide that you do need (not want - actually need) business cards and letterheads then there's a few pointers you might want to follow:
* DO NOT print your businesscards or letterheads yourself. Not unless you're a qualified graphic designer. What appeals to your eye make look incredibly bad to your clients.
* DO carefully pick the type of paper you're going to use. Is it compatible with your printer for example?
* DO NOT crowd your letterhead or business card. The name of your business and contact details are all that you need there. Not your life history.
* DO remember that less is definitely more. Always leave some white space on your stationery.
* DO NOT (at least try not to) buy pre-printed letterheads with a standard graphic or layout. Hundreds of other companies may be using the same letterhead as you.
* DO use a professional printer with a proven record of results *and* a porfolio to show you.
The best type of business stationery is that with a classic look to it. There's absolutely nothing wrong with a crisp white paper with black or dark blue text used for the heading. The same applies to your business cards. The more understated your approach is to your stationery the most powerful the overall effect will be with your customers.
If you're looking for a great business card printer then you could do a lot worse than using Vistaprint. I find the quality of their work excellent and their prices are extremely competitive.