How to Design and Print Branded Envelopes in Microsoft Word in 5 (4 Easy and 1 Really Frustrating) Steps

The first time I attempted printing on envelopes was when I was doing Christmas cards about six months after I had started selling envelope templates as part of my invitation business. By time I designed the template for sale, the product had already been requested multiple times, and I finally caved. Something about the process intimidated me, and I was very reluctant to enter the market. And I was right . . . to an extent. I’ve been selling envelope templates for years now, and a number of them are best-sellers. That said, I encounter customers who experience issues with the process on a very consistent basis. If I am spending multiple hours assisting a customer, almost guaranteed I’m working with someone who is trying to print on envelopes.

Going back to my first time, I, too, had challenges, and printing perfection probably came after (similar to some of my customers’ experiences) about two hours of fighting frustration. I write all this not to scare you off but to properly prepare you. For most how to’s, I go on about speed and ease. This is not that kind of introduction. You will most likely be confused and annoyed at one or multiple points in this process. If you’ve got a fighting spirit, you may even be tempted to physically confront your printer. However – if you’ve got endurance, you will most likely prevail!

You could also be one of the lucky ones. Many of my customers have raved about how wonderfully easy the process was for them. I’m always a little secretly envious in those situations. Hopefully, that, too, will be your experience.

Regardless, whether or not you initially struggle and ultimately succeed or immediately win the day, you will pretty much be an envelope printing wizard going forward (until you purchase a new printer of course). Now, the process is old hat for me and is SOOO much quicker than writing out addresses and SOO much nicer looking than labels (yes, I’m an envelope snob now, sure, but we all have our faults). So . . . if you’ve decided you want to plunge forward, I commend your gumption and encourage you to read on.

1. Open Microsoft Word and select New > Blank Document. Click the Layout tab, press the Size button, and choose Envelope #10 (which is a standard business-size envelope). Then, click Orientation and select Landscape. Finally, click Margins, select Custom Margins, input .6” for Top and Bottom and .86” for Left and Right, and press OK.

2. Next, add your logo. Click the Insert tab, select Pictures, and choose This Device; then, navigate to your logo, select the file, and press the Insert button.

You’ll probably need to adjust the sizing. If so, just click on a corner of the image and drag DIAGONALLY to increase or decrease the size as needed. (If you drag other than diagonally, you could resize your logo disproportionately.)

Then, click in the open space to the right of the logo, press enter to add a line space, set your font properties, and type your business address. (I went with Calibri font in size 7.5 and expanded the character spacing by .5; I fiddled a little with the options until the address lined up just so with the logo.)

3. Select the Insert tab, click the Text Box button (in the Text section at upper right), and choose the Simple Text Box.

Click the Shape Outline dropdown and select No Outline. Type in your recipient’s name and address (or just input placeholder info for now). Then, select the outline of the shape and click the Home button to set the font properties of your text box. (This time, I went with Calibri in size 11 centered and expanded the character spacing by 1. I also selected Remove Space After Paragraph from the Line and Paragraph Spacing dropdown.)

At this stage, I just fiddled with the font properties a bit more. I decided to center the text, extend the character spacing by 2 pts, cap the name, put the zip code on its own line, and extend that character spacing by 5 pts. I also moved the text box move down a bit.

4. Be sure to save your file at this point to be accessible whenever you need to print an envelope.

And now, on to the tricky part. . . .

5. Go to File > Print. Once on the Print screen, be sure Envelope #10 is selected from the Page Size drop down.

Load your envelopes in your printer (according to your printer specifications). Take a picture so you remember your placement.

Print. If the addresses printed upside down, on the wrong side, not on the envelope at all, etc., adjust your envelope’s placement in the printer accordingly. Take another picture (so you can keep track of what you’ve already tried).

Once you know the proper way to line up your envelopes in your printer, be sure to take one last picture of the right placement for future reference . . . for the next time when can be an envelope printing pro.

That said, good luck . . . and try to be patient (or at least try to make it a little fun . . . maybe do a shot between each fail).

Disclaimer: An alternative route to printing envelopes in Word does exist, and I would be remiss not to at least mention that Microsoft does offer an automated set-up for Envelopes. While the functionality can be less frustrating when printing, formatting options are very limited. Feel free to check out Microsoft’s envelope how-to and see which route suits your needs best.

If you have any questions or comments, leave a reply below.

(Next up in the world of business envelopes . . . mail merge. Stay tuned!)

Building Blocks: The Beginning

Where to Begin?
Once you’ve made the decision for your business that you are going to build your brand from the ground up, you may find yourself a bit overwhelmed. I certainly did. In this post, I reflect on the beginning of my journey as I learned to focus on branding even while in survival mode.

What’s in a Name?
This piece examines some of the considerations in selecting the right name for a well-branded operation.

Design Your Own Logo
This tutorial provides a very hands-on approach to building your logo. Whether you are considering a totally new design or simply looking to adjust, adapt, and tweak an existing one, these tips (including where to find needed tools) should prove useful.

Know Your Audience
A very basic but essential part of any branding exercise should be to make sure you know your audience and choose branding elements that properly reflect their characteristics. This article reviews some of the basics for you to consider.

How to Create a Mission Statement
Need a little inspiration for crafting that ever-so-important message? This post includes a couple dozen great examples along with an exercise that breaks down the components of a good mission statement to help you develop yours.

The Role of a Brand Style Guide
Once you have completed each of the above activities BUT BEFORE YOU BEGIN BUILDING BASIC TOOLS LIKE BUSINESS CARDS OR LETTERHEAD OR INCORPORATING THE ELEMENTS INTO MARKETING OR ADVERTISING EFFORTS, take the time to create a style guide that puts into writing the most basic rules that must be observed to properly build the visual element of your new brand.

How to Set Up Simple Print-and-Cut Business Cards
Start with a blank Word document and develop business cards that are print-ready in only ten steps . . . this “how to” guides the way for you. A Corel Draw tutorial is available as well.

How to Easily Create Business Letterhead
As integral as business cards and even easier to develop, letterhead created in Microsoft Word is presented as Instructions with Template Included and a Video Tutorial. Instructions and a template are available for Corel Draw as well.

Note: Many helpful downloadable tools/templates are provided to add extra value to the pieces described above.

How to Create a Branded Thank You Card for Your Business in Microsoft Word

Disclaimer: While we only recommend products we know and love, we want to note we use affiliate links and may earn a commission for purchases made through those links.

Every business should have a custom thank you card on file – the piece gives you the opportunity to express appreciation to your customers, employees, business partners, or anyone else deserving of thanks while reinforcing your business’s brand; also, I love gestures that have double-duty impact at minimal (almost no) cost.

So, in case you don’t already have one of these gems saved on your hard drive, I’m going to take you through the process of making a 2-on double-sided 5×7” branded Thank You card in Microsoft Word.

1. Open Microsoft Word and create a New Blank Document. Change the margins of the page by selecting the Layout tab (at the top), clicking the Margins button, selecting Custom Margins, and changing the Top, Bottom, Left, and Right margins to .25 inches.

2. Click the Insert tab (at the top), click Text Box within the Text section, and select Simple Text Box. Click the outline of the rectangle, hover over the center handle of the bottom line, and click and drag downward to increase the size just a bit. Then, right click on the rectangle, choose More Layout Options…, click the Size tab, input a Height of 5”, select Absolute within the Width section and input 7”; click the Position tab and uncheck “Move object with text” from the Options section. Next, right click the rectangle and select Format Shape. Format the Fill as No Fill and the Line as a Solid Line, Black, 1pt in Width, and Dashed. Now your text box is ready to be customized.

Click the content within the rectangle, which will select everything, and press delete. Set the alignment to centered by pressing Ctrl + E and then type “Thank You”. Press the enter key to advance a couple lines spaces and then insert your logo (Insert tab > Pictures > This Device > browse to the image file for your logo > Insert).

Now you’re obviously going to want to do some formatting. I decrease the size of our logo to 1” in height (the width automatically adjusts proportionately), change the font of “Thank You” to Candellion in 80 pt. and add some line spaces.

3. With the rectangle selected, press Ctrl + C and then Ctrl + V to make a copy. Click and drag the outline of the second rectangle to move about a quarter of an inch from the bottom of the first and horizontally centered on the page (indicated with a green guideline).

4. Duplicate the page: press Ctrl + A to select all the content on the page, press the Insert tab (towards the top), click Blank Page in the Pages section (at top left), and then Ctrl + V to paste the content from the original page onto the new page.

Next, go to the second page and delete the content of the text boxes. You’re going to want to type your message here. (I used the Calibri font in size 11.) Copy and paste the content from one text box to the next (or type different content) and then remove the border of each box. (When you print double sided, the printer will offset the reverse side some small amount and the boxes won’t line up perfectly; therefore, you can just leave the boxes on the front as your cutting guide.)

5. Save your file, print double sided on card stock, and cut!

Happy creating!

If you would prefer someone else do the creating and the printing for you (and the end product show up at your door step with envelopes included), we have a route available for you, too. Click here to personalize and purchase this Thank You card on Zazzle.

If you have any questions or comments on this topic, we’d love to hear from you. Scroll down to the comments section at the bottom of this page.

How to Easily Create Business Letterhead in Microsoft Word (Template Included)

Disclaimer: While we only recommend products we know and love, we want to note we use affiliate links and may earn a commission for purchases made through those links.

Letterhead can be one of the easiest components of your brand . . . and have a significant impact, presenting your business to the world with professionalism and credibility. Still, people are often intimidated because they don’t realize the difference between a letter on a new, blank document and one on professional-looking letterhead requires just a few simple steps (three actually). You can have yours ready to use in about ten minutes, assuming, of course, you’ve already made the hard decisions about your brand identity and:

already have a logo;
have your chosen fonts; and
have selected your color palette to use with your logo.

(If not, we encourage you to read Design Your Own Logo and The Role of a Brand Style Guide first.)

Now, on to those three simple steps . . . .

1. From within Microsoft Word, go to File > New > Blank document. Start by preparing the main section of your letterhead and set the font properties; no text needs to be entered or selected to do this. Just choose a font and font size (I went with Calibri in size 10).

2. Then, click the Insert tab, press Header, and choose Edit Header.

Press Ctrl + E to set your alignment to centered. Then, press the Insert tab again, click Pictures this time, navigate to a high-resolution image (PNG, JPG, etc.) of your logo, and press Insert.

You’ll probably need to adjust the sizing of your logo as this point. If so, just click on a corner of the image and drag DIAGONALLY to increase or decrease the size as needed. (If you drag other than diagonally, you could resize your logo disproportionately.) Then, click in the open space to the right of the logo and press enter to add a line space. You’re now done with your header!

3. Scroll down to the footer and click within that area. Press the Home tab to set your font properties. (I went with Calibri in size 12 Centered.) In the footer, you can include your company name (or omit if you’d like since your company name is most likely already included in your logo), your tag line (don’t waste any opportunities to educate people about your business), your web site address, email, address, phone number, etc.

I included our business name, tag line, and web address; I also added some dashes above the web address for visual separation. And, voila! Done! Double click the space above the dashed line labeled footer to exit the header and footer and return to the main document. (At this point, the header and footer content will be grayed out, showing that you are editing the main body of the document. To return to the header and footer section, simply double click in either the header or footer sections.)

Before calling it a day, be sure to save your template. Go to File > Save as; then, Browse to your desired location, name your file something that will be clear to you in the future (like “letterhead”), and save.

Feel free to download and use our letterhead as a starting point.

IF you would prefer someone else do the creating and the printing for you (and the end product show up at your door step), we have a route available for you, too. Click here to personalize and purchase this letterhead on Zazzle.

If you have any questions, just ask us below!

Design Your Own Logo

Disclaimer: While we only recommend products we know and love, we want to note we use affiliate links and may earn a commission for purchases made through those links.

Lots of businessowners question whether they’re creative or tech-savvy enough to create their own logo. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you neither of those qualities are needed, but I can safely say they’re not needed in the abundance you probably imagine.

Things you do need to design your own logo:

A little creativity
A little tech savvy
A vector editing program (available for free)
Lots of fonts choices (available for free)
Lots of icon choices – IF you want a graphical component to your logo (available for very minimal cost; the icon used in our logo cost $2.99)

So where to start?

While graphic design isn’t my specific trade, I’ve been asked to create dozens of logos throughout my career. Every time, I start by facing that same dreaded obstacle: the blank page. I stare at it, thinking about what the logo should represent and the type of fonts, colors, and imagery to best suit that message. Meanwhile, a blank page relentlessly stares back.

While a tedious process, you should set your expectations for your logo before you pick up a pencil (or the mouse).

Originally, logos were introduced as an aid to people who couldn’t read. As a result, the earliest designs tended to be very literal. (For example, a shoemaker’s logo would inevitably show a shoe.) Over time, the purpose of logos has evolved to become a broader reflection of brand but remains a key way of differentiating yourself in the marketplace.

So what’s the personality of your company? Is your business youthful and trendsetting? Conservative and financially strong? Fun and whimsical? Product-focused and straightforward? Some combination thereof? This corporate identity (or brand) needs to be communicated in your logo – through your font(s), color(s), placement of words, and any graphics.

If once you have a strong sense of your business “personality” in mind, your page is still unyielding in its never-ending canvas of white, go looking for some inspiration. . . .

For the Brand Building for Small Business logo, I knew I wanted to try something graphical to literally represent the act of “building.” I was initially picturing letters being nailed but knew that would be tricky to execute in a clear way. So, I went to my go-to spot for inspiration: google images. I searched for “building logo,” hoping the results would be full of construction-type logos also looking to convey the literal act of “building.” But no, Carole, searching “building logos” yields lots of logos of buildings.

. . . Should have foreseen that. Instead, I searched for “building construction logos” and found more of what I had in mind.

A couple screens in, I found inspiration.

Looking at the Hammersmith logo (in navy and white on a yellow background), I love the way the hammer is a silhouette within the house and appears to be captured mid-swing. I immediately knew I wanted to try a hammer silhouette, but I wanted the graphic to appear within the company name and not as part of a separate graphical element.

A quick note on inspiration versus copyright infringement: This is an area requiring caution. Whereas you can use a silhouette of a hammer as seen in one logo in another, creating a logo for a construction company with a silhouette of a hammer in a navy house with white windows on a yellow background would most certainly earn you front-row seats to the case of them v. you. An individual idea cannot be copyrighted; however, “a collection of ideas” makes a logo (or any other original work) unique and can be protected by law. Tread carefully.

LOGO ICONS

So, where does one go for icons that could legally be used as part of a logo for minimal cost? A number of options exist, but I like https://thenounproject.com/. They have a large selection and charge nominal, one-time fees per icon. I found the hammer for our logo for $2.99.

A number of choices were available. . . .

I selected a classic and simple hammer.

I then purchased and downloaded the file in PNG (bitmap image with a transparent background) and SVG (vector) formats. (A separate article on Vector vs Bitmap file formats is planned.)

VECTOR/GRAPHICS SOFTWARE

Now what to do with your icon? We use the vector and graphics editor, CorelDraw. While the suite is powerful and much cheaper than your standard graphics package, the cost is still pretty steep in the $500 ballpark. I read a few articles on free vector-editing programs, found Inkscape (https://inkscape.org/) to be highly recommended, and gave it a go. The program seems to have the features needed to get the job done. (And, they make a number of tutorials available, including one on the basic tools: https://inkscape.org/en/doc/tutorials/basic/tutorial-basic.html.)

FONTS

An obvious first step when selecting a font to use for your logo is to scroll through the existing fonts on your computer to see whether anything catches your eye. Remember that you’re not looking for the font that necessarily looks the best to you; rather, you’re looking for the one that best represents your business’s brand. If you’ve picked out an icon at this point, you’ll also need to be mindful of the way a given font looks with your chosen icon. You can have an icon and a font that both separately represent your brand perfectly but just don’t look good together. Since I wanted to try including the hammer as a silhouette within the words for Brand Building for Small Business, I needed a really bold, thick font. I gave Arial Black a try, knowing it’s the boldest font currently available on my computer, but I wasn’t really pleased with the result.

Thankfully, a source exists offering hundreds of (*free*) fonts in a searchable format that actually makes the process relatively easy. With Google Fonts (https://fonts.google.com), I was able to type in my sample text, BRAND BUILDING, the size I wanted to preview, 60 px, and my desired font characteristic(s), increased thickness.

After much trial and error (downloading, installing, and trying dozens of fonts), I found Titillium Web Black and a contrasting script, Candelion Regular, to work in black and two shades of navy.

While I am VERY tempted to digress at this point and start talking about some of the many techniques that can be used to marry the fonts/words used in your logo to the images you’ve chosen . . . I keep reminding myself that level of detail is really better suited for another blog entry further down the road. For now, I will stick to my original plan to keep this message broad but nevertheless offer a few . . .

CONSIDERATIONS

At some point, you may choose to print sales materials in grayscale or advertise in a print media in black and white. You may want to have branded pens for your company (requiring a very, very small logo) or you may purchase a building on Times Square and want your logo proudly illuminated on top (requiring a very, very large logo). Before you decide your design is a done deal, you should run a few tests. Try changing your color scheme to grayscale as well as black and white and print a very small version (one half inch on its biggest side should be sufficient) and a very large version (full page). If all variations look ok, you’ve probably got a keeper.

Export your new logo as a high-resolution transparent RGB PNG, which will work well in MOST (but not all) environments. (Inkscape export settings are shown at right below.)

Once you’ve managed to get this far, you’ll want to protect your work. Your logo should be registered as a trademark. If you are not of a mind to involve your lawyer in the process, consider checking out various on-line alternatives and look into the steps involved in going the DIY route (for example: https://www.wikihow.com/Register-a-Trademark-Without-an-Attorney).

Next up . . . confirm your understanding of your business’s audience; read: Know Your Audience.