8 replies to this topic

[AbleReach]

Check.This.Out.

Letterheady - a blog of Interesting Letterhead Designs



I find Letterheady to be inspiring and refreshing. There are no cluttery text ads, no gratuitous garbled bits - just pure letterheadyness. And, it's active and has been active for a while.

[EGOL]

Thanks. That company was rightly proud of their work!

I looked at a couple dozen and they were interesting.

I wonder when lots of people will start using creative headers in their email? I get a few with great headers but they are mostly retail advertising or other promotional.

[JVRudnick]

@Egol...so...seems like you've just found a "hole in the market!"

let us all know when "Egols Email Letterhead" firm is launched....

& I'd buy one from you too, eh!

:-)

Jim

[bwelford]

Hi Elizabeth, a great topic that I'd not thought much about.

I use salesforce.com where the notion of using a letterhead on your e-mail is 'in your face' so I set that up for contacts with people in the database. However in Gmail which is my default email software, it is not so obvious.

After a little research here is the way you can do it in Gmail.

If you want a letterhead on all responses and new messages, then you can add images in your 'signature'. You can then work within the signature to add text wherever it should go in relation to logos, etc.

If you want to use different letterheads, then Google Labs has a Canned Responses feature where you can create a number of templates for replies and messages. One or more of these could be your letterheaded message format.

HTH

[AbleReach]

I hadn't intended to get into issues of how to integrate letterhead into digital communication, but it is on my think-about-this list! I enjoy graphic design and have been learning about html email templates via learning about MailChimp. It doesn't make sense to me when branding is not consistent across channels. Why not take the step of designing an email footer to package with a letterhead design project?

In my opinion, big letterhead designs are not appropriate for email. We expect email to be quick and simple. If I got an email with a fancy letterhead I'd look for where to unsubscribe to the newsletter.

I think the sig/footer area of emails could be used like letterhead, with care. If I had employees emailing on the behalf of my company, I'd want all employees to use an identical or coordinating sig/footer. If the footer could contain clickable links, I'd want a few - maybe home, services, help and contact at the most, depending on what the site was about, but not the whole navigation structure. Any links should be there to help the recipient. Tuck in self promotion and I'll bet you'd see an increase in people marking emails "spam."

[danielletowner]

Thank you for sharing this site - their letterheads are so creative. Love them!

[jedz]

that was a unique letterhead. It looks great.

[Black_Phoenix]

Love the Letterheads, cool inspiration!

In my opinion, big letterhead designs are not appropriate for email. We expect email to be quick and simple. If I got an email with a fancy letterhead I'd look for where to unsubscribe to the newsletter.

Not trying to detract from the initial post but some image heavy emails can be quite beautiful and popular:

eg Apple Examples

I'm fully with you regarding the size of them, if you have a bad web connection etc...

We do loads of emails at work and we also use Salesforce and exact target to send them to a large selection of clients, we do as you suggest create fast loading ones and (tip) if you are using large deep header images, have some html text eg: 'New from Apple' so you can see who its from without downloading the images.

I think branding print letterheads and having a web version that reflects that design is a must, maybe not so complicated but great to keep the branded theme

Hope I didn't hijack your post...

Dave

[AbleReach]

Not a hijack at all, more of a contextually relevant elucidation.

Side note -
Having used "elucidation" in a sentence, I will pat myself on the back and move on.