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Church Letterhead Design Tips
Letterhead seems like it should be easy to design, but the world is filled with terrible stationery. Some tips:
- Use a light color of paper--ivory, beige, tan, cream, light blue, light gray, or even white. Dark colors make the text more difficult to read. You'll be printing black on the stationery (using a typewriter, inkjet printer, laser printer, or photocopier), so the darker the paper color, the less contrast between the black ink and the paper--which means the less the words will stand out. And the words are the reason for the letter.
- Invest in a quality grade of paper (Royal Fiber and Royal Linen are two nice ones). Give your letterhead a professional look.
- Print the letterhead in one or two colors. With a light colored paper, a one-color printing will give the appearance of two colors (cream paper and blue ink, for instead); the black that you add from your laser printer appears to be a third color.
- Since you need to print stationery in large quantities, don't include information that could easily change, because that'll make your stationery obsolete. That may include email and website addresses, staff names and titles, and service times.
- Don't print staff names on letterhead. As soon as you do, a staff change will make your letterhead outdated. In a small church, you need to print a large quantity of letterhead to be cost-effective, perhaps with the assumption that the next pastor will use it at least for a while.
- Print a minimum of 1000 copies. That will last a while, and a press run of less than 1000 isn't cost-effective.
- Don't make the church name and logo so big that they overwhelm the page. Many contemporary stationery designs--and some of the most elegant designs--keep the name and logo small and unobtrusive.
- Make sure the letterhead includes all the information someone would need to contact you. That means you should include the area code for the benefit of people living outside your area.
- Include the web address, if the website is up-to-date and attractive. A website is a good promotional tool if you make it a good promotional tool. Don't use the "www" in the address, just the domain name.
- Sometimes, churches put their slogan at the bottom of the stationery, with the address right under it in a little smaller type, like this:
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