by Joshua Feinberg

"A big part of your company's branding and professional image, as far as its stationery goes, has to do with consistency. To help achieve this, we're going to make use of Microsoft Word templates and wizards."

First in a two-part series
Morganville, NJ
May 21, 2001

Do you find yourself throwing away more and more pre-printed letterhead and envelopes whenever the most seemingly small detail changes, like your area code, fax number, web site address, or PO Box number? Do you wish you could customize letterhead and envelopes for various managers, departments, mailers, and marketing campaigns, without having to incur expensive setup charges and minimum print runs from your local offset print shop?

Are you looking for a way to bring some of this printing back in-house, while still maintaining a highly professional image for your crucial business correspondence?

Are you wondering how we do it at Smallbiztechtalk.com? And more importantly, how can you leverage your small business savvy to create a cost-effective, highly professional set of company stationery?

Look no further than Microsoft Word templates!

In this week's installment of Money-Saving Techniques, you'll learn how we used Microsoft Word templates to create our small business letterhead.

Then in our next issue on June 4th, you'll learn the second part of this task --- how to create a matching small business envelope template in Microsoft Word.

Get On Board with Microsoft Word Templates (and Avoid the Amateur-Look)

Before we get started, there are two major faux pas' that you want to avoid at all costs.

First, never and I mean never, print your own business cards. There's nothing more amateurish than a business card printed on an inkjet or laser printer. Period.

Second, don't bother buying those papers with the patterns in the background or patterns around the border.

While these papers are excellent for creating social invitations for holiday, birthday, and retirement parties, the widespread availability of these papers at office supply superstores gives the patterned papers a remarkably amateurish look.

Depending on the type of image and branding you want to project for your company, pay careful attention to paper selection.

We've always achieved the best, and yet most cost-effective image by honing in on the finer granite and linen bond papers and envelopes -- the types of paper routinely used for resumes.

Select Your Paper

First let's talk about the paper.

My company has standardized on a 24lb. Heavyweight, Gray Granite Paper, both in 8-1/2" x 11" size and its matching No. 10 business envelope.

Because this paper is sold in boxes of 500 sheets in hundreds of office supply superstores across the U.S., I don't have to worry about my printer going out of business and forever losing the "exact" match on reorders.

Our cost per page for the paper, before factoring in toner or ink, works out to a mere $0.03 U.S., while the matching envelopes come out to roughly $0.18 U.S. each.

This particular brand and paper type advertises right on the box, "designed for use in today's inkjet and laser printers". Be sure to purchase the appropriate paper type, which will depend on whether you'll be using an inkjet, monochrome or color laser printer.

Note: If your small business is still using a dot matrix printer, yes there are a few still out there, drop us a line at letters@smallbiztechtalk.com.

Create Your Logo

Next, after you've nailed down your paper selection, consider your small business logo.

If you already have a logo in electronic format or have a hard copy that you'll be scanning in to "digitize", you can skip ahead to Customize Your Microsoft Word Templates.

Tip: If this is your first foray into designing a small business company logo, or you already have a small business logo and you're not maximizing its use for branding and image purposes, brainstorm a list of all the places it should be in your company's repertoire. Some standard targets to consider, besides the obvious letterhead and envelopes, include fax cover sheets, invoices, purchase orders, web site, clothing, signs, and advertising specialty products.

If you don't already have a small business company logo, which you plaster on everything, the time is now to put on your creative marketing "hat", or enlist the support of someone who can help. There are many software programs you can use to design a small business logo yourself.

For logo creation, we just love one of the newest additions to the Microsoft Office family, Microsoft PhotoDraw 2-- sold a la carte for $109 U.S., assuming no upgrade rebates, and also bundled with Microsoft Office Premium Edition. If you'll be spending a lot of time designing customized Microsoft Word templates, Microsoft PhotoDraw is a highly recommended companion.

Tip: If you don't already subscribe to our FREE bi-weekly "Tips" e-zine, you now have an added incentive. As a special small business computer support subscriber bonus, you'll be able to download our FREE mini-report "Top 10 Ways to Get More Out of Microsoft Office".

Alternatively, you can create a small business logo in Microsoft Draw, which is included with Microsoft Word. To launch Microsoft Draw, simply go to your Insert pull-down menu in Microsoft Word, choose the Picture command, followed by the New Drawing subcommand. Or if you prefer, you could use Microsoft Paint (under Start, Programs, Accessories) to design a basic logo.

Once you've created your logo, be sure to save a copy in either Windows Bitmap (.BMP) or TIFF (.TIF) file format.

Note: Avoid .GIF or .JPG file formats, the standard file formats used in web page design. .GIF and .JPG files are generally saved at a much lower resolution than you'd want for a print document, like letterhead or envelopes.

Customize Your Microsoft Word Templates

A big part of your company's branding and professional image, as far as its stationery goes, has to do with consistency. To help achieve this, we're going to make use of Microsoft Word templates and wizards.

First, we'll tackle your standard letterhead and save some time by using an existing Microsoft Word template - the Professional Letter template.

1. From your File pull-down menu, choose the New command, click on the Letters & Faxes tab on the New dialog box, Select Professional Letter from the list of available Microsoft Word templates, and click the OK button.

2. At the top of your page, you'll see text boxes that show "Company Name Here" and "[Click here and type return address]". In those two text boxes, customize your company name and basic contact information.

3. Then to add in your logo, place your insertion point (or mouse "cursor") back in the "Company Name Here" text box. From the Insert pull-down menu, choose the Picture command, followed by the From File subcommand.

4. Next from the Insert Picture dialog box, navigate to the folder location where you saved your logo file. Select that file with your mouse and click the Insert button.

5. Once you have your logo inserted in the same general area as your company name, you'll likely want to size it down to a more "letterhead-friendly" size. You can resize your logo graphically, by clicking on it and dragging the corner. Or if you're more inclined for precision, select the logo with your mouse, right-click on it, choose the Format Picture command on the context sensitive pop-up menu, followed by clicking on the Size tab. From that tab, you can adjust the Height or the Width measurement --- or both simultaneously.

6. Finally, to save your custom Microsoft Word letterhead template, choose the Save As… command from your File pull-down menu. Then in the Save As dialog box, click the drop-down arrow for Save as type and choose Document Template (*.dot). Then give your template a name (I used Letterhead.dot) and click the Save button.

7. Now the next time you want to use your newly created Letterhead Microsoft Word template, you just need to choose the Letterhead template (File pull-down menu, New command, General tab) in much the same way we started this exercise by choosing the included Professional Letter template.

Note: If for some reason your newly created Letterhead.dot template is not on the General Tab when you choose the File, New command, check your default template folder path(s) and make sure you have the template file saved to the correct folder. You can view or change your default template paths from the Tools pull-down menu, Options command, File Locations tab.

The Bottom Line

In this issue's Money-Saving Techniques, we saw how to create an economical, yet highly professional, consistent brand image for your company by creating your own letterhead with Microsoft Word Templates.

We started out by looking at paper selection, then moved onto small business logo creation, and finally assembled the small business template in Microsoft Word.

In the next installment of money-saving techniques, we'll look at the second half of the equation: how to create a matching small business envelope template in Microsoft Word.

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About the Author: Joshua Feinberg is an internationally recognized small business technology expert, consultant, columnist, author, keynote speaker, and trainer. He is a published Microsoft Press author, as well as the creator of and two-year veteran writer of the Microsoft Direct Access "VAPVoice: Notes From the Field" column. Learn what your highly paid computer consultant doesn't want you to know! Subscribe to Joshua Feinberg's FREE bi-weekly Smallbiztechtalk.com "Tips" e-zine and receive two FREE mini-reports by e-mail.