Business Forms

Organizations use business forms for customers, for employees, for job applicants, for investors, and many others. From invoices to surveys, somebody has to design all those business forms.

"This paper has been presented at the Annual Symposium on Information Resources Management sponsored by the Business Forms Management Association and at the Plain Language Conference sponsored by the Plain Language Institute of British Columbia." You'll find useful advice on fonts, using contrast, placement of ballot or checkboxes, and grouping items on forms.

Smashing Magazine and Kat Neville shows you how to design a better invoice. Tips include not forgetting the basics such as your name and contact information as well as that of the customer and building politeness into the invoice.

Rebekah Hah says to get rid of useless design features, use rows not columns for fields requiring longer text, and keep the questions relevant to the job.

This tutorial takes you very briefly through creating a grid and a sample form. (Use the number navigation at the top not the text linke at bottom - it doesn't seem to work).

This eHow tutorial describes steps for Microsoft Word and includes tips on white space and grids.

You may never design forms for the IRS but you can learn about form design by identifying the problem with US tax forms and practice redesigning them.

When an form arrives in an envelope, before the form can be filled out the envelope needs to entice the recipient to open the form. That's part of the discussion here. The envelope does more than just hold the form.

Creative Research Systems provides survey design advice including tips specific to the actual layout of a print or Web questionaire (scroll down) including length, welcome message, arrangement of answers, and use of graphics.

This Microsoft tutorial provides simple instructions on using tables to make a fill-in-the-blank form.

Download a variety of templates for business forms in Excel and RTF formats.

Browse a gallery of free Microsoft Word templates for job applications, thank you letters, performance reviews, and other types of forms for business from HP.

Many free, some for a small fee, there are different types of business forms for real estate transactions, wills, employment, and more.

Get inspired by these sample forms for Human Resources, Education, Finance, and other fields at perfectforms (formerly quask).

Learn how to design effective Web forms with this book (Compare Prices.