Talking about your corporate stationery set and design, they are more than creating letterheads or business cards. Surprisingly, it has increasingly become the establishment of a brand identity. Here, you have to look at your business stationery as a package of the brand as a whole rather than individually.
Let’s explore more about brand identity and why it important, stationery and why is it important, tips for excellent stationery designs, and some recommendations of stationery templates.
What is brand identity
Your brand identity is your brand’s face. It is the visible elements of your brand, like design, color, or logo, that classify and differentiate your brand in the minds of your customers (Investopedia, 2020).
According to American Marketing Association, brand identity is the name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller’s good or service as distinct from those of other sellers.
Meanwhile, Jeff Bezos of Amazon defines brand identity as “branding is what people say about you when you are not in the room.” It is the way your target audience identifies and recognizes your business or company as a whole.
If a brand is an intangible, emotional, and philosophical conception, then brand identity is a tangible, visual element of a brand, as representative of the larger concepts. Brand identify usually includes typography, logo, color, messaging, and packaging. It functions to complement and strengthen the current brand’s reputation.
Why Brand Identity is Important for Corporations
We can say that brand identity is inward- and outward-facing. It will attract new customers to a specific brand while at the same time keeping the current customers feel at home. Other reasons why brand identity is important for any business or organization are as follows.
Premium Price
A strong brand identity asks for a premium price. It is like the question, “why is someone eager to pay thousands of dollars for a certain brand than other brands?”
Good brand identity will attract more potential customers and ask them to take out and spend more cash. Simply put, a solid brand identity will position you (your brand) in the customers’ minds as the one that provides quality worth paying for.
Quality Awareness
Once again, a strong brand identity positions your brand or your company in the minds of your customers as providing high-end quality, thus worth more paying for. Or the customers position you as better in quality.
Brand Recognition and Loyalty
Your target audience tends to remember your business, product, or service if you have a good and solid brand identity. It has been proven that memorable company logos or symbols will have their place in their customers’ minds, both existing and prospective ones.
When they are satisfied with what you offer, a strong brand identity will further help you establish what-so-called customer loyalty.
Experience and Reliability
A strong, well-built brand identity ultimately will create a specific image of an established organization or business. If they have been sufficiently around, they will become more recognized and then well-known.
People mostly see a branded business as the experienced ones. Consequently, they will see those kinds of organizations or brands as more trustworthy and reliable.
Brand Peculiarity
In today’s digital era, brand differentiation is a must. It is crucial to persistently distinguish your brand identity from other fellow competitors. By having a solid brand identity, you will stand out in the crowded and newly emerging marketplaces.
Stationery and Letterheads: Why is It Important?
Corporate stationery is not only in the form of your official business or company letterhead. Every paper utilized for building communication with customers or associates is also corporate stationery—not to mention all printed papers and documents with your business or company name, logo, tagline, and the like.
Simply put, in addition to custom letterhead, it will include a business card, compliment card, envelope, invoice, brochure, presentation folder, calendar, or even shipping label.
So, why is business stationery essential? Here are some of the reasons.
It makes your business more legitimized.
Your stationery sets make your business stand out by legitimizing your company in the midst of million established or start-up crowds. In other words, it relays a message to others that you are serious with your business when you send out the right, well-designed stationery.
It builds your brand identity.
Having the right, creative, and well-crafted corporate stationery will help you establish your brand identity. A high-end design look will also reflect your business or brand image from the very first. Moreover, through your stationery, people can see your strong brand message, what your business is all about and what you offer.
It builds connections with your existing and potential customers.
Corporate stationery can be one of the best ways of communication to reach out to your target audience. Indeed, you can have correspondence with them on a more personal basis. They will feel that you pay more care and attention to them through your stationery.
It encourages your employees’ pride.
Implanting a sense of pride in your employees is one of the tasks as a business owner. You want to see your employees are bragging about your company, how much they like working with you, and more. Corporate stationery can be one of the ways to help your employees feel more proud about your business or company.
It is more cost-effective among your company’s grand scheme.
Choosing not to have and use corporate stationery may cost you in the long run. It is better to ask around for the most reasonable stationery prices, keeping it as a little part of your normal business operations.
Tips to Create Excellent Corporate Stationery
Your stationery set might be your company’s representative to the public and target audience. Since you need them to relay your business or brand message, your corporate stationery needs to have an excellent design. Check out the following tips to design your stationery into a coherent element of your branding strategy.
Getting the basics right
First, it is better to get the basics right. What are the basic elements you need to include in your stationery design or templates? They are as follows.
- Header and Footers
- Contact information
- Imagery (company logo is essential)
- High-quality paper or Card Stock
- Follow the color scheme
- Font
- Clean space
Also, you have to adhere to the simplicity rule. It means that your corporate stationery has a simple but clean layout, with no pointless clutters. Simplicity will focus more on your content and easily enable brand awareness.
Add geometric shapes
The most common geometric shapes you can recognize and use in graphic design are square, circle, triangle, pentagon, hexagon, or octagon. However, before deciding on any geometric shape to your stationery design, you must understand your purpose well. Once again, you must refer to the message or brand identity you want to deliver.
Understand your audience
Identifying your target audience is one of the most significant factors in your brand marketing strategy.
A target audience is a specific group you want to focus your brand or business promotional efforts on or those you expect will buy your products or services. It usually consists of your existing and prospective customers or clients.
You can define your target audience through, for example, advertisements on social media or social networks, marketing campaigns, etc.
Uniformity across designs
This tip answers the question: Is my business stationery design consistent? Make sure that your stationery set has uniformity across designs. Avoid, for example, unmatched colors, different paper quality, or even the design that is no longer cohesive with your brand background story.
Include beautiful border
Never underestimate the power of a simple or even a beautiful frame to your business stationery design. A border will give a distinctly attractive finishing touch to a layout and wrap up your design into a neat and nice bow.
10 Professional Stationery Templates
If you are not confident enough with your design skills or lack time, you can turn to stationery templates. The following is the list of professional or business stationery templates unlimitedly available in Envato Elements.
This stationery pack offers you well-designed templates for:
- Business Cards ((3.75×2.25″)
- Letterhead (A4 & US paper size)
- Letter Envelope (8.66×4.33″)
- Compliment Card (5.5×4.2″)
- Presentation Folder (24.8″ x 17.3″)
The files are available in easily editable AI, PSD, and EPS formats, compatible with Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop.
If you are looking for a super clean yet creatively modern and professional corporate stationery template, this is one of the best options. Fully editable and easily customizable, the vector graphics (including logo) are available in Dark and Light versions of AI and PDF file formats.
This set offers simple yet modern stationery template designs. You will get a pack of Letterhead (in A4 and Letter formats), Business Cards (3.5 x 2in), Envelopes (8.66 x 4.33in), and Presentation Folders (9 x 12in).
All files are editable AI and EPS Adobe Illustrator formats, available with free fonts (two used fonts are Work Sans and Roboto Condensed).
Elite Stationery consists of high-end and quality-guaranteed printing of well-organized templates. You can edit and customize every single detail, where the text is in pre-crafted paragraph and character style.
You will get InDesign templates of Letterhead, Envelope, Folder Card, Business Card, and Invoice. They are available in A4 and Letter size dimensions, both horizontally and vertically in design.
Known for its trendy, clean, and bold characters, Local Stationery Templates are available for two-sided business cards, letterhead, and envelope designs. You will get two size dimensions for each of them, US and European standards.
You can easily edit or customize the logotype name, text, or information details, including free fonts. Moreover, you can download the fonts at the provided links. The templates are in high-resolution vector of ready-to-print AI, EPS, and PDF file formats.
Are you looking for a minimalist yet elegant design for your corporate stationery set? James – Stationery Set is not only suitable for any business or company purposes but also for other professions or careers that pursue distinctive brand image and quality. The design shows the professionalism of young yet reliable characteristics.
This pack consists of Letterhead (8.5in x 11in), two-sided Business card (8 x 13 cm), Envelope (A5 Size), Map Cover (8.5in x 11in), and Invoice (A4 Size). All files are compatible with Adobe Illustrator.
Color Block is about modern and professional stationery templates in the clean design of high-resolution vector graphics. The package will give you one Letterhead (8.5×11in), one Business card (3.5×2in), and one Envelope (9.5×4.125in). All templates are in standard size and available in two-sided design.
The files are fully and easily editable in AI, PDF, EPS, and PSD formats, using Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop.
Deux Montagnes is another good choice if you are pursuing a fashionable yet bold stationery set. It includes the templates for business cards, letterhead, and envelopes, available in two size dimensions (the US and European standards). Also, each of them is available in a two-sided design format.
Containing CMYK and high-resolution vector ready-to-print files (AI, EPS, PDF, and PSD), this pack requires you to have the basic skill of using Adobe Illustrator or Adobe Photoshop.
Make your clients remember your brand with Olive Identity Stationery Template’s unique design. This set offers A4 from designs for business cards, folder cards, and envelopes.
Available in Adobe Illustrator CC and PDF files, the templates use QuickSand Font, which you can find on Google Fonts or from the available download link.
The last but not least example for stationery templates comes in simple yet modern and eye-catching Colorful Triangle Stationery template design.
It consists of a complete set of Letterhead (in A4 and Letter sizes), Business Card (3.5 x 2in), Presentation Folder (9 x 12in), and Envelope (8.66 x 4.33in) templates. All are in fully editable and customizable Adobe Illustrator files (AI and EPS formats). Also, it offers free fonts with two used typefaces are Bebas Neue and Source Sans Pro.
The first impression counts. It is your corporate stationery that may be the first thing your target audience sees. Therefore, it is essential to express your professional image or even brand identity through your stationery design. Many creative options are out there. Go to Envato Templates if you look for well-crafted business stationery packs and mockups.
