Business Stationery Design: Building Your Brand

We talked recently about how your logo is just the tip of the branding iceberg, and I wanted to give you a graphical example of how important all of your branding materials, in addition to the logo, are.

You might think that once you have a logo, you have a brand. Not so! As you can see from our early business stationery design explorations, Aeolidia could have been very different, even keeping the same logo.

We decided on our logo then set to work making the whole brand come to life, starting with our business stationery.

These ideas were too feminine

The following two ideas were striking and beautiful, but I ultimately nixed them for being too feminine and too mainstream for Aeolidia. The splots, on the left, are so dear, and remind me of ocean life. The coral, while elegant, was just too elegant, and gave me too much of a “sophisticated older woman’s desk set” vibe. Ha ha, or is that just me?!

Colors will change the tone

With the mission to make the design more gender-neutral, Mariah came up with the waves pattern, which was an instant winner! Even after nailing down the logo, pattern, and basic design, we found that changing the colors a bit gave an entirely different feel. Below is the first waves idea, and then a version where Mariah altered it to use a crisp navy – so different!

We settled on a soft charcoal grey on cream, but you can see that just switching cream envelopes for charcoal, below, makes a difference in how luxurious and unique the stationery feels.

Approved stationery designs

We decided that the charcoal envelopes made the look, and below are the designs we sent to the printers. These are a great mix of feminine and masculine, with the colors providing a “hint of history,” as Sarah described it.

The package just came from Mama’s Sauce with all this stuff in it, and I almost swooned! I’ll show you photos of our print design once we have them ready. As always, get in touch with us if you could use some work on your brand presentation.

Oh, and hey! I’ve been sharing this kind of stuff on our newly revitalized Instagram account! Please follow Aeolidia on Instagram. I’d really appreciate it! I’ve been neglecting that one for so long that we hardly have any friends on there. Come keep me company, and see some peeks at what our stationery looks like in real life.