Designing email stationery and more for Emma clients

Taylor Schena shares how reading and nonstop scribbling help her stay inspired and on task

Sometimes I wonder if I was born wielding a pencil. I’ve always been a chronic doodler, and I don’t think I could go an entire day without some sort of mindless drawing or scribbling. And while it’s definitely a habit that comes in handy when I need to flesh out my ideas, it is, of course, only part of the process for creating a new design.

First things first: I simply can’t start designing in the morning without a cup (or three) of coffee and running through my RSS feed reader. Starting my day with 20 minutes of hot caffeine and some inspiring design blogs helps give me a fresh look at what I have on my plate.

My schedule includes a wide variety of projects — so my process is flexible. The common thread, though, is the basic need to find a delicate balance between putting my nose to the grindstone and freeing my mind for more creative thinking. When it comes down to it, my design process always comes back to these four steps …

Research

Before jumping into the actual concept and creation of the design, I like to research what my client does and find out what makes this particular brand special. Email design is of course a bit less in-depth than larger scale projects such as, for example, logo creation — but it’s still important to understand the identity of the brand your work will represent.

I typically start by clicking through the website and reading its content. I’ll check out their product, service and employee pages and maybe even take a look at competitors’ sites and offerings. This step doesn’t eat up much time, and the time spent is well worth it. Getting an accurate feel for who a client is and what they’re about can make or break a design.

Inspiration

This part of the process is my favorite. On one hand, it’s ongoing. Regardless of which project is in front of me, I’m always looking for inspiration: whether it’s a gem buried in my RSS feed, a trip to the flea market, a conversation with a friend or a weekend hike in the woods. As a designer, I think it’s crucial to be immersed in your environment and culture. You never know when a random experience will lend itself to an idea.

Of course, each design assignment has its own immediate, project-specific needs. If I’m stuck on an email design concept, my go-to hot-spots for a creative kick in the pants are Beautiful Email Newsletters and Smashing Magazine. I’ll also visit my favorite design sites (Design Work Life, The Best Designs, Felt and Wire, Mint Design Blog, and Swiss-Miss are some of my favorites), plus sites relevant to the client’s industry. This gives me a sense of what’s been done and where there is room for something new.

Sketching

Some designers prefer jumping right from the design request to the screen, but I find that I need that hand-to-paper part of the process — even though I don’t always have as much time for it as I’d like. Even if all I’m doing is sketching out how I plan to code an email, that visualization can sometimes save me from revisions or coding mistakes down the line. Sometimes, I let myself get into detailed drawings and ideas, but even when time is short, a quick sketch works in a pinch.

Creation

Once I have my concept in place, it’s time to jump in and get my hands dirty. I take all the various materials I’ve accumulated, the conversations with the client, inspirations and sketches, and I start putting the pieces together. All the previous leg work typically makes this part a fairly seamless one. When the design is ready to go, I code it, place it in the client’s account and answer any questions they might have.

If the client is unhappy with the design, or if I find myself stuck and just not certain with how things are turning out, I know my best bet is to don a thick skin and ask my colleagues and design friends for a quick critique. As a designer, it’s important not to take things too personally. Sometimes a client isn’t satisfied, and you have to be open to that criticism.

In those situations, listening is most important. Why isn’t the design satisfactory? Why doesn’t it achieve what the client was hoping? Is it a question of aesthetics or simply a miscommunication? Take the assessment and suggestions, ask your colleagues for their opinions and thoughts and head back to the drawing board.

Remember that creating a design for someone else’s brand is a chance to connect with another person, learn something new and make a little magic. And the best part of my job is that I get to do this every day with several clients. Every project is a new adventure.

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Is your email stationery in need of a new look? Request a Concierge Design or Studio Design from the Emma design team.

Email Is Not a Website

How coding an email is different than coding a website … and why it matters.

Designers typically belong to one of two very different camps: print and web. But what about the HTML email designer? Email is its own breed, its own medium. If you ask any web designer who’s designed and coded successful email campaigns about the process, a rant is sure to follow.

Web design allows for complicated, fancy code, and strict standards are in place to ensure functionality and success across browsers. Email, sadly, is not quite so lucky. While there may only be a handful of web browsers to consider when viewing a website, email programs number into the teens — and that’s not including webmail and cellphone applications. In addition, every single email medium renders HTML differently. How, then, is a designer to create stylish *and* effective emails that look great across all programs?

Well, you may have thought the 90s were over, but not so much. While most web trends of the late 90s have gone to the wayside (think animated .gifs and Comic Sans), when it comes to email, you’ll want to dig back to the olden days of code. Keep it simple, and keep it clean. Remember tables? Remember nested tables? How about spacer .gifs? You may be well-versed in PHP, Javascript and Flash, but those skills are completely useless in the world of email. I know you may be cringing, but this in no way should stifle your creativity. Look at it as a challenge to push your creative limits.

Code email with style, not styles.
Website design today often relies on Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), which are generally housed in a separate document pulled externally by a website. Unfortunately, email programs just aren’t that robust. If external CSS is referenced in the code, most email programs will mark the email as a security risk and either move it to the junk folder or not deliver it at all. These programs don’t want your code messing up theirs, and they certainly don’t want to risk an email pulling information from a nefarious source instead of an actual CSS document. This would be bad for them as well as the recipient.

The solution? Inline styles. Many of them are perfectly acceptable in most, if not all, email programs. The CSS font-family element, for example, is universally accepted, and it works best when placed directly in a <td> tag. Use this style to upgrade your font from plain old Times to something a bit more stylish (but still web-safe). You can check out this list of popular web-safe font families.

<td style=”font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;”> sample text </td>

Keep in mind that what is OK today may be refused tomorrow, and using unaccepted inline styles can really affect the way your email designs look and act. Do your best to stay on top of the rules and test *every* email campaign. For a pretty complete list of which styles are and aren’t accepted across the board, check out Campaign Monitor’s handy list.

Keep it simple.
It’s also best to design and code your email in a table-based, grid-like way. Keep in mind that email does not work the same as a printed newsletter either. You cannot layer elements, and the grid structure must be linear. An item positioned at the bottom with content wrapping around it won’t work very well in the code. Once you finish your design, never export your code from Photoshop. Code that sucker in Dreamweaver or another plaintext editor to make sure your code is clean and error-free.

All in all, coding an email campaign isn’t as hard as you think:

• Just use simple HTML akin to what was popular in the 90s.
• Steer clear of fancy code languages like Javascript or PHP.
• Use inline styles as opposed to CSS.
• And create your design using a clean, table-based structure and grid-like layout.

Need help? Click here for more examples of HTML for email.

This post launches another new blog category for us: Design Tips. Each month, Emma’s design team will give you tips to help you perfect your own email designs. Next time, we’ll dig into how email marketing design is different than print marketing.