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Looking Good On Paper

Written by: James Chan

Article Overview: When you go into business on your own, your stationery has to convey that you are a professional running a professional business. Looking good on paper is not an option. It is a requirement.

Looking Good On Paper

One of the first things you have to do when you go into business for yourself is to get your own business cards, letterheads and envelopes. Many people make a mistake when they do this. They think that they are simply purchasing office supplies. What you~{!/~}re really doing is creating a brand for your business, one that is often the only image many people will ever see.

It~{!/~}s just as important for you to have a corporate identity as it is for IBM. It may even be more important because while IBM is a familiar brand, few people know who you are. Self-employed people are often viewed as being between jobs. If your stationery and your business card have an improvised, stopgap look, you will merely confirm that stereotype.

It~{!/~}s easy, nowadays, to sit at your computer and come up with something that looks more or less all right. It is very difficult, though, to quickly improvise something that communicates the substance of what you do, the emotional tone that you bring to the job, and the seriousness of your intent. But that~{!/~}s exactly what your letterhead and your business card ought to do.

I started in business with good-looking stationery. It was designed for me by a very talented former assistant. It featured a logo with the letter i in lower case in a typeface that, to me, evoked the brushstroke of Chinese calligraphy. (It had a bit of the feel of Lucent Technology~{!/~}s brushstroke circle.) For me, the letter was the subtlest possible allusion to my Asian specialty, and it stood for ~{!0~}idea.~{!1~}
I liked the design, and very impetuously had a great quantity of it printed. I ignored a friend who argued that nobody else would possibly be able to figure out what I was trying to say. When a prospective client asked me what the i stood for, I began to realize that while my identity was more than respectable, it was ambiguous, and certainly not compelling. Later, I noticed that an italic i that resembled my logo is used internationally as an international symbol for information. My firm wasn~{!/~}t in the business of telling people where to get the bus from the airport to downtown. I needed a logo that couldn~{!/~}t possibly be confused with anything so mundane.

My next brand identity was based on the first, but it was homemade. I replaced the old logo with my chop~{!*~}stylized versions of the three Chinese characters that made up my name, inside a square border. Such chops, or inked stamps, are a familiar feature of Chinese culture, often replacing a signature. I had substituted an ambiguous identity with my own. But while my previous stationery was a harmonious design, my new one looked like the improvisation it was. I kept using this stationery as my business declined. I knew it wasn~{!/~}t good, but I didn~{!/~}t want to make the investment to change it.

Finally, in 1991, I came up with a new name for my business, Asia Marketing and Management, and I asked Steve Ong, a good friend who has worked as an art director for several top advertising agencies, to design my identity. I thought he would just go away and come up with something, but instead, he asked me some difficult questions. What was my business about? What did I aspire to do? What did I want to communicate?

Even though Steve knew me well, he probed and looked for clues about the messages~{!*~}beyond my name, title, address and telephone number~{!*~}that I needed my letterhead and business card to express. We spent most of an evening discussing this. I remember telling him that I wanted to run a business that would help pull two continents together, like Hercules.

What he came back with was a design that was so shockingly strong, I almost rejected it. I had figured I would get rid of the chop, but he came back with it larger, and in red. I realized that what had been wrong with my chop on the old letterhead was that it was too small; it almost seemed to be apologizing for my involvement in Asia. Then he stacked the first letters of my company name, AMM, vertically. It reminded me of Giotto~{!/~}s bell tower in Florence. I knew that most people wouldn~{!/~}t see that, but the square and diagonal forms do evoke a solid structure, something I wanted people to perceive. This design is most assertive on the business card, which is vertical, not horizontal.

I went ahead with the design, though I wasn~{!/~}t used to being quite so formidable. I worried that it might be a bit much. Then one day, I was talking with a partner of an enormous law firm. ~{!0~}You know,~{!1~} he said, unprompted, ~{!0~}your stationery is much better than ours.~{!1~} I realized at that moment that my brand identity needs to be stronger and more sophisticated than that of a larger, more established firm. I~{!/~}m independent, and I need to be recognized. My business card comes on strong, and so do I.

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Article Tags: allusion, asian specialty, brushstroke, business card, business cards, chinese calligraphy, corporate identity, emotional tone, international symbol, italic, letterhead, letterheads, lower case, lucent, lucent technology, prospective client, purchasing office, seriousness, stopgap, typeface



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