The stationery people actually hold.

What stationery and collateral design covers

These are the parts of a brand someone physically holds, and they are usually the first place a brand falls apart. A website stays coherent because one person built it once. Stationery is remade constantly: a new invoice template here, a card reordered from a different printer there, a deck assembled the night before a meeting. Each of those is a chance for the identity to drift a little further from itself.

Print is also unforgiving in ways a screen is not. A colour that sat perfectly on a monitor prints flat and dark on uncoated stock. A hairline that reads at browser size closes up on press. An icon never tested at 20 mm turns into a smudge on the back of a card. None of that shows in the design file. It appears in the box that arrives from the printer, by which point five hundred of them exist.

So the work is half drawing and half specification. Laying out the card is the visible part. Choosing the stock, setting the trim, deciding whether the mark runs as a spot colour or in process, and testing how the logo behaves at its smallest printed size are what make the card come back looking like the thing that was approved. It is where a brand identity system stops being a document and becomes an object.

What gets designed

The set is decided in the brief, item by item, against what your company actually hands to people. A studio that ships the same eleven-piece pack to everyone is selling a template and calling it a decision.

• Business cards, front and reverse, drawn to the stockPrint
• Letterhead, continuation sheets and compliment slipsPrint · Digital
• Invoices, quotes and statements as editable templatesTemplate
• Email signature, in HTML and plain textDigital
• Presentation and pitch deck mastersKeynote · PowerPoint
• Folders, labels and packaging basicsPrint
• Signage artwork for door, window, wall and exhibitionPrint
• Production specification sheet for every printed itemPDF

Printed work is easier to judge by eye than by description, and completed stationery sits with the rest of the work in the agency archive (opens in a new tab). The screen equivalent is a social media kit: profile assets and post layouts that hold together across platforms.

How the artwork is specified

Almost all of the back-and-forth between a client and a printer is caused by artwork that was exported and never prepared. The terms below are print industry standards, not studio jargon. Any supplier will recognise them, and any designer handing you files should be able to say what they set for each one.

Vector artwork sits underneath all of it. If the only version of your logo is a raster file, no setting here will save it on a sign, so which files you should have been given is worth checking first. Clearspace, minimum size and one-colour use are governed by your brand guidelines, and the printed set is drawn to obey them.

Who prints it

That split is deliberate. Printing is a local business. A supplier near you can put a stock sample in your hand, hold a proof to the light with you, and deliver in days; shipping cards across the world adds cost and delay for no gain.

Printers sometimes want something specific: a different bleed, a preflight profile, a die line of their own. Send it through and the files are adjusted to match. That is a short exchange, and it does not turn into a new project. If you would like a second pair of eyes on the proof before it goes on press, send that too. The work runs through the same four stages as everything else here: brief, directions, refinement, delivery. They are set out in full on the process page.

Whether this is right for you

This is a good fit if:

• You have an identity, or are commissioning one, and now need it to exist on paper.
• You hand things to people: a card at a conference, an invoice, a printed proposal. You want them to match the website they came from.
• Your current templates are documents that three different people have each quietly edited.
• You are about to print something in quantity and want the specification right the first time.

It is a poor fit if:

• You need artwork tomorrow for a print deadline that cannot move.
• You want one business card and nothing around it. A printer’s own template will serve you better and cost less, and we will say so.
• You have no mark and no palette yet. There is nothing to apply, and the sensible starting point is the logo or the identity around it.

We say that up front. Taking on a project that was never going to work helps nobody. If you are not sure which of those describes you, write anyway and describe the situation.