What’s a great and easy way to make your company more memorable? Does your company need to – and want to – post letters? How can you bring your branding elements into an elegant physical form?

In this podcast episode, Sam Carvalho discusses 18 tips to make your letterhead design stand out.

Podcast Sponsor: Brighter Vision

When you’re in private practice it can be tough to find the time to even review your marketing efforts, let alone to make improvements where needed. Whether you are a seasoned clinician with an existing website in need of a refresh, or a new therapist building a website for the first time, Brighter Vision is the perfect solution.

By first understanding your practice and what makes it unique, Brighter Vision’s team of developers are then able to create you a beautiful website that will attract your ideal clients and get them to contact you.

Better yet, they also provide unlimited tech support to make sure it’s always up-to-date, and professional search engine optimization to make sure you rank high in online searches – all at no additional cost.

But best of all, we’ve worked with them to create a special offer just for Practice of the Practice listeners.

Get your first 3 months of website service completely FREE. To take advantage of this amazing deal, head to brightervision.com/joe.

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[SAM CARVALHO] Welcome to the Marketing a Practice podcast with me, Sam Carvalho, where you’ll discover everything you need to know about marketing and branding your business. To find out more about how I can help you brand new business visit www.practiceofthepractice.com/branding. If you’d like to see some examples of my design work, be sure to follow me on Instagram at Samantha Carvalho Design. Hi there. Thanks so much for joining me today on the Marketing a Practice Podcast. You’ll hear that my voice sounds a little bit different than normal. Apologies for that. I’ve just been recovering from a bit of sickness. Today is just me and I thought that we would chat around letterheads, specifically letterhead design. I was going through previous episodes just to see what we’ve spoken about and what we’ve covered. Obviously, we’ve spoken extensively about branding and how to market your practice and just general design tips. Every now and then I’ve honed in on specific designs and provided tips and advice on that and so I thought I would do that around a letterhead because we haven’t yet covered that. Although letterheads may seem a bit outdated these days, there is still something timeless and elegant about using a custom design letterhead for all of your correspondence. Even if you’re not writing letters by hand, a typed letter looks more thoughtful and intentional when topped with a striking letterhead design. As a business, a letterhead that features your branding gives you one more way to impress your clients and make your company more memorable. The nice thing about creating a letterhead is that it can be applied to more than just letters. You can use it for all your digital documents, emails, your newsletters, invoices, and even thank you notes. All of those can benefit from a well-designed letterhead. [SAM CARVALHO] Here are some tips on how you can go about designing a great letterhead in no particular order. Number one is to play up your branding. While you should definitely include your logo in your letterhead design, try to think of other ways that you can creatively integrate your branding to. For example, you could use portions of your logo instead of just pasting your entire logo at the top or just include the icon of your logo. This will result in your color scheme being featured on pieces as a visually interesting design element, but without resulting in brand imagery that seems forced or repetitive. Another idea is to incorporate a brand pattern. If you don’t have a brand pattern as part of your branding, then you could try creating one by repeating your icon if it allows for this. [SAM CARVALHO] Number two is to keep it simple. Even though you do want to emphasize your brand, you don’t want to do it in such a way that it distracts from the content of the document. Try to keep your design clean by sticking to only one or two accent colors and a spacious layout. You would’ve noticed from looking at letterheads that you essentially just include a design on the top or the bottom, although you can include design anywhere, which we’ll get to later on in the episode, but you obviously want to leave a large amount of space in the middle for the actual content. The point of the document is not the design, it’s the content and so you just want to include design that emphasizes the content. [SAM CARVALHO] Number four is to embellish it. If you really want your letterhead to stand out, find a printer that can accommodate some special printing effects. Things like metallic printing and embossing can really make you stand out from the crowd. Number five is to focus on typography. For a more classic look, you could try a design that primarily features typography. This could include a mix of typefaces from a bold sand syrup to a vintage style script, which can turn necessary information into an attractive design feature. Number six is to use meaningful imagery. If you’d like to go so far as to include a watermark in the background, for example, or imagery on one side, make sure that it says something about your brand and is relevant to the intended audience. [SAM CARVALHO] Including a watermark as part of your LED letterhead design is a subtle way to draw attention to your brand without taking up valuable space on the document. It’s also transparent enough that you can write or print on top of it. For those of you who are a bit lost as to what I’m talking about, a watermark is essentially a faded image that you can include in the background as it were of your letterhead. So even if you blew up your icon and have it sitting in the middle it’s very faded so the content of the letterhead can still appear over it without any disruption. [SAM CARVALHO] Number seven is to not neglect the reverse side. This is obviously specifically if you plan on printing your letterhead. If you’re mailing out physical letters, you can include something on the backside, even if it’s just a solid color or pattern, which gives the design extra polish and again, is a great way for you to stand out from the crowd. Number eight is to try a badge or crest. For a more personalized graphic, to build your laser head around a badge or crest can be a fun option and adds a more vintage type feel to your overall design. I think when it comes to private practice your business is very personal so thinking of incorporating personal touches into your letterhead design is actually an opportunity that you have over most other businesses who perhaps need to portray a more corporate feel. Number nine is to scale up. Another way to get the most out of your branding is to scale up with some element of your logo. This works especially well with items that have geometric or linear qualities. [BRIGHTER VISION] When you’re in private practice, it can be tough to find the time to even review your marketing efforts, let alone to make improvements where needed. Whether you are a seasoned clinician with an existing website in need of a refresh or a new therapist, building a website for the first time, Brighter Vision is the perfect solution. By first understanding your practice and what makes it unique, Brighter Vision’s team of developers are then able to create you a beautiful website that will attract your ideal clients and get them to contact you. Better yet, they also provide unlimited tech support to make sure it’s always up to date and professional Search Engine Optimization to make sure you rank high in online searches all at no additional cost. But best of all, we’ve worked with them to create a special offer just for the Marketing a Practice listeners. Get your first three months of website service completely free. To take advantage of this amazing deal to brightervision.com/joe. Again, that’s brightervision.com/joe. [SAM CARVALHO] Number 10 is to sign it off. Using your signature as part of your letterhead design, again gives it a distinctive and highly personalized look. Since your signature is one of a kind, this is an easy way to ensure that you have a letterhead design you won’t see anywhere else. Number 11 is to add a stamp. Custom rubber stamps are inexpensive to order and can give your letterhead a tailor-made branded look that adds a bit of a homemade flare. Number 12 is to pick an accent color. Choosing one identifying color as an accent to brighten up the black and white design can change the whole mood of a later head. Again, if you are wanting to play around with your branding, instead of incorporating your entire brand palette, you could rather just choose one color, whether it be a more subtle color or maybe one of your pop colors. You can just use that color in your letterhead to make it stand out and to make it slightly different from your other branded material, but still in line and consistent with your branding. [SAM CARVALHO] Number 13 is to pay attention to the paper. The quality of the paper you choose for your letters can make a big difference on the impression that they make. There’s something luxurious about the feel of a thick textured piece of paper. If you want to emphasize that your brand is high-end, a quality cotton card stock will help reinforce those brand treats. Number 14, borrow like an artist. Artists are known for borrowing ideas and riffing off each other’s work. It’s part of the creative process. So if you’re having trouble coming up with an interesting design for your letterhead, try looking to famous artists or art movements for inspiration. [SAM CARVALHO] Number 15, switch it up. If you have an established brand identity but you’re wanting to keep things fresh, try switching up your color scheme once in a while. This coincides a little bit with number 12, which is picking an accent color but here you could consider switching your color scheme up entirely, but maintaining the visual side of your branding, if that makes sense, so keeping the same font, the same graphics, just switching up your color scheme. If you’re nervous about switching it up too much, you could try just using a different tone of your current color scheme. [SAM CARVALHO] Number 16 is to wrap it up. In closing, the information you want to include on your letterhead in a shape or frame makes everything look neat and organized. This also makes it easier to resize the whole thing and place it on any other type of printed or online resource. That allows for nice consistency across all your marketing materials. Number 17, bring in a beautiful border. If you’re wanting to introduce color to your layout in a restricted, elegant way without distracting from the content of your letter, a border is a great way to do this. Borders help to frame the content of your letter and therefore draw attention to the text, which as we mentioned right in the beginning, is the ultimate aim of a letterhead. [SAM CARVALHO] Number 18, use hierarchy in your design. Letterhead design, like almost every other field of design, is about communicating important information effectively. Usually, the most critical piece of information you need to communicate is who is writing the letter. After that, a return address, a telephone number or an email address are all needed. You need to decide on the critical pieces of information your letterhead should convey and then design based on this hierarchy. Key information should be positioned obviously and accessibly, while less important information can be reduced in size and tucked away in a less obtrusive area. [SAM CARVALHO] That’s it guys. There’s 18 tips on how to design a great letterhead or on ways to make it stand out a bit more. You are welcome to use Canva. If you want to play around with designing your own letterhead, canva.com is a great free tool that already includes a bunch of layouts that you can play around with and then you can just download it yourself and you use it across your marketing materials. Or you can use me obviously. If you head over to practiceofthepractice.com/design, you’ll see more information on my services as well as some packages that offer a slightly discounted rate if you’re looking for a number of design items. So definitely be sure to check that out if you would like my help with designing your letterhead, your stationary, your logo, basically anything related to digital or print design. Thanks so much for listening and I’ll see you in the next episode. Thanks again to Brighter Vision for sponsoring this episode. To get your first three months of website service completely free, head on over to brightervision.com/joe. Thanks for listening to the Marketing a Practice podcast. If you need help with branding your business, whether it be a new logo, rebrand, or you simply want some print flyer designed head on over to www.practiceofthepractice.com/branding. If you’d like to see some examples of my design work, be sure to follow me on Instagram at Samantha Carvalho Design. Finally, please subscribe, rate, and review this podcast on iTunes if you like what you’ve heard. Talk to you soon. Marketing a Practice podcast is part of the Practice of the Practice podcast network, a network of podcasts seeking to help you market and grow your business and yourself. To hear other podcasts like Beta Male Revolution, Empowered and Unapologetic, Imperfect Thriving, or Faith in Practice, go to practiceofthepractice.com/network. This podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regards to the subject matter covered. It is given with the understanding that neither the host, the publisher, or the guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical, or any other professional information. If you want a professional, you should find one.