Design: Letter templates
RobJN
Public
Seen by 28
Not my favourite area but may interest those with a keen eye for good design: Here are some letter templates which we will need for the geospatial commission letter.
I've worked up some letter headed paper styles. Feedback welcome. Please have a look at the following attachments and let me knwo your thoughts including on the footer options (e.g. 1b and 1c differ by footer only).
For option 1b/1c to work we need a strap line otherwise it looks quite jarring as there is a gap in the right alignment (i.e. "United Kingdom" is not right aligned) before our address lines. Currently I use "Your OpenStreetMap Local Chapter", but other straplines could be:
- Your OpenStreetMap Local Chapter
- Supporting the OpenStreetMap project
- Supporting the OpenStreetMap community
- Local OpenStreetMap support
- Proud supporters of OpenStreetMap
- The local voice of OpenStreetMap
Options 1d and 1e explore alternatives that avoid the alignment issue and (in 1e) remove the strapline.
Option 2 uses the centre/vertical logo form which we haven't used anywhere yet.
Option 3 starts to try to replicate the website with the dark gray bottom, with Option 3b placing the address in the bottom border instead of the top right (I don't like this).
Option 4 is another attempt to match the website, with 4b onward adopting the narrower text and offset logo that you get if you print any of the website pages.Excessive replication of the website print page style creates challenges for letter - where to place addresses (if at all). As such there are several versions here: 4c moves our address to the top (smaller footer), 4d adds the recipients address, 4e places the recipients address above the title.
Don't worry about the fact that some run to 3 pages - we are looking for a format that works across all report lengths. "Lorem ipsum" text used as placeholder for the real text.
RobJN Sat 20 Oct 2018 9:20PM
Option 1d and 1e were added later. I'm not sure on 1d, but 1d is good.
Any views? If not I will just pick one for sending this on Wednesday.
lakedistrict Sat 20 Oct 2018 10:44PM
1d/e looks nice. Not sure if the postal address needs to be so prominent at the top though, I'd probably put it in the footer (and maybe move the web address to the top).
lakedistrict Sat 20 Oct 2018 10:45PM
And maybe the footer should continue on to page 2, 3, 4 etc
RobJN · Sat 20 Oct 2018 9:19PM
My view is that 3 is better than 3b (i.e "3 > 3b") and 1c = 1b.
Furthermore I think 4d > 4c > 4b > 4e. I'm not convinced the narrow text and offsetting of the logo in Options 4b-4e adds anything so am tempted to suggest a 4d version with the text width and logo placement of option 4.
Having said that, I am not particularly sold on any of the options 4 or option 2.
Overall I think option 3 header (as it means we don't need to sort a strapline just yet) with either option 1c footer or option 3 footer is best. For the black footer, I feel it should only go on the last page. For the plain footer I have no view (first page only, all pages, last page only all ok).