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UW LaTeX Letterhead

This is a LaTeX version of the University of Washington "matrix" stationery or letterhead.

It uses the fonts provided by the UW website (Matrix II and OpenSans) and attempts to be pica-for-pica identical to the stationery template distributed as a Microsoft Word "DOCX" file by UW Brand and Creative Services.

Requirements

Because this document uses OpenType and TrueType fonts and produces tagged, accessible PDF/UA-2 output, it requires LuaLaTeX (not XeLaTeX or PDFLaTeX). LuaLaTeX is supported by Overleaf although it is not the default.

On Debian or Ubuntu, install the following packages:

latexmk
texlive-luatex
texlive-latex-recommended
texlive-latex-extra

apt install latexmk texlive-luatex texlive-latex-recommended \
  texlive-latex-extra

On other systems, installing a full TeX Live distribution should provide everything needed. The tagging code requires TeX Live 2025 or later. On Overleaf, set the version under Menu > Settings > TeX Live version. TeX Live 2025 is not in Debian Trixie, but it can be installed from sid (unstable) without pulling in too many other packages.

The two required fonts, Matrix-II and OpenSans, are both included in this repository, so no additional font packages are needed.

Accessibility

The letter is a tagged PDF declaring PDF/UA-2 (ISO 14289-2). Two keys in the \DocumentMetadata block at the top of the .tex file do this, and both are needed: tagging=on loads the kernel code that puts the text into the PDF's structure tree, and pdfstandard=ua-2 writes the conformance claim.

You can check a built letter with veraPDF:

verapdf -f ua2 washington_letterhead_letter-matrix-deptartment.pdf

Note that a PASS is necessary but not sufficient. A letter whose body text is all marked as artifact passes too, because the standard only requires that content which is not real be an artifact.

You can confirm there is something in the structure tree as well:

python3 -c "import pikepdf,sys; d=pikepdf.open(sys.argv[1]); \
  print(d.Root.get('/StructTreeRoot') and 'tagged' or 'UNTAGGED')" file.pdf

The signature image carries an alt= description, which is what a screen reader announces in place of it. Keep that in place if you swap in your own signature.

The letterhead graphic in the page header is treated as an artifact, like other running header content, so it is skipped rather than described.

Encrypted signature files

If you'd like, you can encrypt the signature file. There are several lines in the Makefile you can uncomment to do this. We've included an optional encrypted copy of the fake signature file. To use it, the passphrase is "weakpassword" (without quotes). You will want to customize this. To use this, you will also need GNU Privacy Guard (GPG) installed on your system.

Scripts

new_tex_uwletter

Creates a new letter directory from the template. Takes a destination directory as its argument:

new_tex_uwletter <directory>

Example:

new_tex_uwletter my-letter

This creates my-letter/ populated with the template files, with the main source file renamed to my-letter.tex. Fonts are symlinked from the source repository rather than copied, so the repository must remain in place.

Symlink the script into your PATH with:

ln -s ~/tex/uw_tex_letterhead/new_tex_uwletter ~/bin/

Contributing changes

If you notice issues with this template, please fix them and contribute back a patch so others can benefit!

The latest version can be found at: https://gitea.communitydata.science/mako/uw_tex_letterhead

You can clone the repository with:

git clone https://gitea.communitydata.science/mako/uw_tex_letterhead.git

Patches can be submitted by email to Benjamin Mako Hill:

Benjamin Mako Hill makohill@uw.edu [work]
Benjamin Mako Hill mako@atdot.cc [personal]

git format-patch origin/master
git send-email *.patch

Copyright and Usage

This template was modeled after the Microsoft Word "Matrix" stationery template published by UW Brand and Creative Services here:

https://www.washington.edu/brand/templates/stationery/

It is hopefully obvious that there are many ethical and legal restrictions on when one can and cannot (and should or shouldn't) use official university letterhead (e.g., it should only be used for official communication). If you have any questions, contact UW Brand and Creative Services at the link above.

This TeX template itself was created by Benjamin Mako Hill and Sayamindu Dasgupta. We dedicated the work to the public domain by waiving all of our rights to the work worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law. You can copy, modify, distribute and perform the work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission.

See details here: https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/

As a result, if you completely remove the UW branding, there are no restrictions on how you can use the work in this repository.

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