Letterhead, Envelopes & Business Cards

   A company's identity package is how it is represented to the world through it's written communications. A geed letterhead needs to look clean, perform well in the office equipment and be cost effective. This is a lot to ask of a printed sheet of paper. It is an attainable goal. The fanciest papers and the prettiest foils stamping can and are the wrong choices for most businesses. The fancy cotton sheets of today are full of recycled fiber and their printing characteristics have suffered as a result of "saving the trees." The sheets that seem to perform the best in the real world of copiers, ink jet printers and laser printers are the bond sheets. These papers have no cotton content and are usually quite sturdy and take to being printed on quite well. Fortunately, these sheets are the most inexpensive! Using a utility grade sheet like bond or offset/offset opaque open up some great cost saving opportunities for the business that needs to send out big quantities (2000 & up). Envelopes are the case in point, Cotton grade watermarked paper would drive an envelope's paper cost up a whopping 700%. By using a 24# white wove commercial envelope, you could use that paper savings to reach another 10%-15% more potential clients instead of giving that money to a paper company. The envelope is the throw away-single use "truck" that delivers the actual communication piece.
  As for Business Card & Letterhead, these are the pieces that are more likely to be kept, especially the business cards, flat sheet does not increase so drastically on paper upgrades so if you must have something fancy, do it on the business cards and short run letterhead (not the bulk mailing letterhead).