Whenever we design an identity project for a new company or service we usually create a letterhead as part of the logo package. The letterhead design gets sent off to the offset printer and the client has a ream of beautifully designed and printed stationery paper. But in this internet age, many people are sending letters, proposals, estimates, etc. only as electronic files. So if you use Microsoft Word to write letters, it makes sense to have an electronic version of your letterhead.
To ensure that we are able to design a cohesive look and feel for our client’s electronic letterhead, we start by creating many of the elements in either Illustrator or Photoshop and then pull them into Word.
I put together a video showing how to create an electronic version of a letterhead design. The tutorial includes how to get your graphic images to bleed to the edge of the page by overriding the margin settings in the header and footer area.
Not sure you have all the graphic elements ready to create your own electronic letterhead? Need a professional graphic designer to help you? Contact us and let us design both your printed and electronic stationery.
Tags: electronic letterhead, how to, letterhead, Microsoft Word, Tutorial, video, Word
Thanks Emily – this is good to know.
I am assuming there’s not much difference between Word for the Mac or the PC?
I kept my letterhead “simple” for that reason, as I didn’t realize you could do more with the template, especially a graphic stretching the entire width. Thanks for showing the true potential for Word templates!
mp/m
The potential in Word is still pretty limited. But knowing that trick about overriding the margins does open up some more design possibilities.
Follow up: I received an email in regards to placing files in Word.
“The thing I don’t understand is what file formats I need. My designer supplied me with JPEGs, which is what I thought I needed. I assembled the electronic letterhead and printed it, and it was a bit fuzzy and borderline not acceptable.”
This is my response: Jpegs are generally the best format for Word. They are usually set up rgb which Word seems to like best. But jpegs are “lossy” types of files, meaning that they lose quality when you save them. So, if your designer creates the logo (and other header and footer artwork) in Illustrator and then imports it to PhotoShop and saves it as a jpeg, it can lose clarity. With jpegs you can control the quality of the save, and you’ll want to keep it very high-quality to keep it from looking fuzzy. The only reason not to make it very high-quality is if the end result is a file that is too large for your uses (say if you are emailing the final word file and the imported images makes it too large). Another thing to keep in mind is that you should try to avoid resizing the image in Word, create it at 100% size in PhotoShop.
Hey Emily –
I did this, but its almost watermarking my jpg. What can I do?
Ashley, I’m not sure what you mean by watermarking the jpg. Word should not affect the jpegs that you import.