Your Letterhead, Your Business … Your Tips!

Letterheads are often wrongly considered as an ordinary heading in company stationery.

Yet, it spells out a lot of difference when doing official business.

Your company letterhead captures the essence of your company’s purpose and style:

• It’s your brand and identity
• It lets your customers know just how professional your company is
• It distinguishes your company from the competition

 Here are some guidelines and tips to make your letterheads that make your organisation look great.

Keep it Simple

Too many special effects overshadow your message of professionalism.

Make the letterhead design reflect your company’s image. Create a logo that points out your company’s strengths – a logo should not stand out its own as a piece of artwork.

Design a Letterhead that is Readable

Take care with the choice of font size, colour and style of your letterhead.

Stay away from those fancy fonts!

You want your name to stand out – not the font.

Use Colour and Graphics only as needed

Don’t overdo the use of colour. When colour is used in too many areas, the areas start to fight for attention. Use colour to emphasise specific areas.

Include only the necessary details

What do you want your customer to know from looking at the letterhead?

You’ll want the company’s name, phone number, physical address, e-mail address, but not much else.

Leaving out extra information will keep the look of your letterhead clean and readable.

And … Make sure the information on the letterhead is correct!

One final piece of advice: 

If you are trying to design your own letterhead and create the artwork on your own but are not confident in what you are doing, it may be worth the cost of having someone experienced do the work for you. They will be able to provide the artwork prepares according to the printers requirements, which could save you money further down the line.

And you can, of course, speak to us … we’re here to help you with all your printing needs!  

Paper, Paper … Read all about it … And then Recycle!

Apparently newspaper sales increase the day after Budget Day – as consumers search for the detail behind the headlines!

And once you’ve read that paper – don’t forget to make sure it is recycled.

As a business involved with the use of paper, we are fully aware of our environmental responsibilities.

You’ve got Use, Reuse, Recycle!

  

Paper is one of the easiest materials to recycle.

Paper is collected from our kerbside or recycling banks by local authorities and waste management companies.

Once the paper is collected it is then:

• Sorted, graded and delivered to a paper mill
• At the paper mill it is added to water and then turned into pulp
• The paper is then screened, cleaned and de-inked through a number of processes until it is suitable for papermaking
• It is then ready to be made into new paper products such as newsprint, cardboard, packaging, tissue and office items

And here’s a fact: it can take just 7 days for a newspaper to go through the recycling process and be transformed into recycled newsprint which is used to make the majority of Britain’s national daily newspapers

Of course, recycled paper can be used for a wide range of everyday products including:

• Newspapers/ magazines
• Printing paper
• Cardboard
• Tissue
• Loft insulation

For effective sales copy - keep your sentences short

Whether you are writing an advert, a blog, a sales letter, or maybe even a speech, I’m sure you will agree that good writing has the power to persuade and influence.

But what are the secrets of good writing?

It’s all about simplicity.

• Use short sentences and everyday words
• Cut the jargon and have a clear structure

If you read most stuff put out nowadays – it is indeed appalling. Badly written, dull - and often downright incomprehensible.

Yet bad writing is not necessary … if you can just count

This was discovered by Rudolph Flesch, an American, who spent years in the 1940s researching what makes easy reading. As a result he formulated some very easy rules.

The simplest is, make your sentences short:

• The easiest sentence to take in is only eight words long
• A sensible average is 16 words
• And, any sentence of more than 32 words is decidedly hard to take in

That’s because most people tend to forget what happened at the beginning of the sentence by the time they get to the end. Always write with your audience in mind and do make it easy for them.

And the same applies to paragraphs. Vary them, but keep them short, containing only one or two thoughts - especially the first one. A long opening paragraph is daunting.   

Don’t be ‘April Fooled’ … buy your stamps NOW!

Most people know (or should know) that stamp prices will rise quite significantly on MONDAY 4^th APRIL.

This has prompted Superdrug to introduce a 5% discount promotion on First Class stamps:

• Discount first class stamps will be available @ 39p each – current price 41p
• Offer runs from 16^th March to 3^rd April inclusive …

A book of 12 first class stamps will cost £4.67, a saving of 25p

Remember that any labelled 1^st or 2^nd class stamps remain valid as they are not date sensitive!!   

And, if you are a regular user of first class stamps and have some spare cash…

• You can save just over 15%!!
• First class stamps are set to rise to 46p from Monday 4^th April

The stamps are available to anyone, so if you have those special invitations to send out in the near future, it might be worth stocking up NOW!

And if you are a business owner who uses stamps it might be worth some forward buying.

Second class stamps are also set to rise from the current 32p to 36p on the same day.

The Superdrug offer doesn’t extend to second class stamps but early buying can save you 12%

I think you’ll agree the percentage savings are attractive.

As that well known supermarket brands says “Every little helps”!

Follow the Etiquette for great Wedding Invitations

In the days before commercial printers, weddings were announced in the centre of the village by the town crier!!

It was also common for nobility to pay monks to create hand-crafted wedding invitations that were delivered by courier. Today, beautiful wedding invitations are affordable but much of the formality still applies.

Wedding invitations might seem like simple things, but how they are crafted and produced can set the tone for the whole event. There are plenty of text books and manuals regarding teaching proper wedding invitation etiquette. In addition it’s well worth discussing with your local printer what options are available and how to maximise your budget.

• ·         Invitations used to be printed in heavy card stock, but this is no longer necessarily the case. Nowadays invitations are printed on card stock, light stationery and even velum
• ·         Take care with the wording of the invitation – it is important! It should indicate who will be hosting and the type of event the guests should expect

The invitations themselves should be sent out six to eight weeks prior to the big event and envelopes should be addressed by hand only … and certainly not computer generated, as this is considered tacky!