The Complete Guide to Designing and Printing Company Letterheads « Back to list

Company letterheads are an absolute must when it comes to business stationery, even in this digital era. Not only do well-designed and professionally printed letterheads add a touch of credibility, make a good first impression and speak volumes about your business, but they are also a legal requirement for certain documents – something we will cover in detail in this blog post. So whether you’re running a large corporate company or a small local agency, please read on to discover how to design and print company letterheads. 

Where Do I Start?

You might be thinking that designing a letterhead can’t be that hard especially when you see how simple and clean-cut letterheads look: but you would be wrong. This simple minimalist look is quite difficult to achieve due to the large amount of information that you must legally include in your company letterheads. To help out our customers, DigitalPrinting.co.uk has put together a complete guide to designing and printing company letterheads. 

What Should I Include In My Company Letterheads?

When you’re designing a company letterhead, you will already have a good idea of what information you’d like to include but do you know what you need to include? Many people don’t know that there are certain legal obligations that you must follow when designing your company letterhead. Don’t panic… whether you’re a sole trader or a limited company, we have broken down each business type and listed the information that you must include on your letterhead: 

Sole Trader:

• Your name
• Your business name (this is the name you’re trading as- not your legal name)
• Your business address
• Your VAT number (if you’re registered)

Partnership:

• Your name
• Your business name (this is the name you’re trading as- not your legal name)
• Your business address
• Your VAT number (if you’re registered)
• All of the partners names must be included (if you have a long list of partners, you can state (e.g. URL)  where a full list of all partners can be found)

Limited Company:

• Your company’s full legal name (usually ends with ‘Ltd’ or ‘Limited’)
• Your company’s registration number
• Your place of registration
• Your company’s registered address
• Your VAT number (if you’re registered)
• Name any profession that you’re a number of.

Other Information: 

Letterheads provide an opportunity to strengthen brand identity and open a line of communication between the company and the recipient. Therefore, don’t forget to include the basic information:

• Contact number
• Email address
• Logo (by including a logo, the recipient will instantly be able to identify who the letter is from)
• Website address (URL)
• Social profiles (e.g. Twitter, Facebook, etc.)

How Do You Design A Good Letterhead?

Now that we know what should be included in your letterhead, we can now start creating your very own company letterheads. 

Your colour palette should represent your brand’s colours. For example, if DigitalPrintingIreland.ie were to design letterheads, we would stick to our core brand colours: white, red and black. The reason behind this is consistency. It’s important that all of your stationery (business cards, notepads, appointment cards, letterheads etc) are consistent with your brand image: this will make it easier for your clients and customers to recognise your brand as soon as they see it.

The position of your logo and information on letterheads should be visible but not obstructing the main body of the letterhead. Having a watermark in the body of the text is perfectly fine! In fact, it’s a really nice design touch and a good use of space that is not only aesthetically pleasing but also ensures people that this important document is in fact from your business. 

One of the most important things to remember when designing your letterhead is less is more. Having a simplistic letterhead is much more effective than a heavily designed letterhead. Remember the goal of your letterhead. It’s not for people to frame and hang up on their wall. It’s an important legal document that your business will use to send out memos, legal notices, tenders and as a means of communication. Therefore, having a minimalist letterhead with a clear body of text will not only look professional, but it will also make it easier to read and serve its purpose.

How Do I Setup A Print-Ready PDF?

Here at digitalprintingireland.ie, we ask that our customers send over their artwork to as a Print-Ready PDF as it eliminates excessive files. This process will also speed your file through our pre-press department as we won’t need to load everything onto our system. 

Supplying a Print-Ready PDF and ensuring you follow our checklist, will not only make the workflow between you and us hassle free, but it also ensures that your design is exactly the way you sent it to us and there are no changes when we download it onto our system. 

What Does A Print-Ready PDF Need To Contain?

• Four-colour process CMYK and not RGB colour space
• Document’s page size is finished trim size 
• Fonts are embedded or converted to outlines so no fonts are needed
• All scans resolution are 300 dpi at 100% of the final image size
• Images are embedded in the file
• Files are supplied with a 3mm bleed
• Any trim, score of fold marks you wish to have must be indicated and outside the live print area
• Artwork is at least 5mm from the edge of the page: this is regarded as a safe or quiet area.
• Black text is 100% black and not a mix of CMYK
• White text is not set to overprint
• Any multiple-page PDF consists of single pages running from the front cover through to the back cover, including blank pages if needed
• If folded, check artwork is setup correctly for these folds

Where Can I Print Letterheads Online?

Here at DigitalPrintingIreland.ie, you are able to print your very own letterheads! We believe that your creativity shouldn’t be limited, which is why you can upload your very own artwork to us! It’s very easy to shop online letterheads with us: all you need to do is click which size you would like, choose your paper preference (our best seller is an A4 letterhead, printed single sided on our 120gsm premium uncoated paper), provide a Print-Ready PDF in the same size, and chose how many you would like printed and we will provide you with an instant quote!

We print all of our jobs on our top of the range HP Indigo Digital Presses to ensure that your artwork is full of rich colours and crystal clear text. We understand how important every single job is that comes through to us, and it’s why we offer DP Guarantee to us customers: we take great pride in the work we do, and we aren’t truly happy unless you are! So, if you’ve received a job from us and we’ve made a mistake in printing or finishing your job, get in touch as we will do anything we possibly can to try and fix and reprint your work for you. 

Remember: when you order over £90 with Digital Printing Ireland you can get free delivery no matter if you are in the heart of Dublin or a rural town!

Visit DigitalPrintingIreland.ie, today to order printed letterheads online.