From a designer’s point of view, emails could be described in their broadest sense as a series of rectangles with content inside of them. Just think of your email template’s wireframe — it’s a series of black and white-filled rectangles, right? When you think of it, nearly everything designed for viewing on a screen follows the laws of the rectangles and color fills, but that’s not necessarily the way it has to be.

A recent design trend that I’ve been intrigued by is the use of textures, uneven edges and off-kilter layers to create a more organic feel to email campaigns.

American Eagle has really been at the cutting edge of this trend. Their campaigns use all three of these techniques, plus handwritten fonts and drop shadows (rather than frames), to make their imagery stand out in the inbox. The innovative use of curled photographs and plaster background textures add even more intrigue to the design. I love the way the background texture blends into the white naturally.

Going one step further, American Eagle’s sister brands are getting in on the fun as well. 77kids utilize a linen-style background rather than a plaster one, along with heavily distressed photo borders and paper clips. It’s a unified look for the master brand and the individual brand, and manages to look home-made yet modern. Read More »

Stephen Sharp is the Creative Director at Experian CheetahMail. Every so often, he’ll be popping by to update us on the state of creative design in the email marketing world.

Over the last couple months, the email design world has seemingly evolved into a very safe and clean environment. Several designs that have come across my desk lately have all trended towards subtle and straightforward vs. aggressively eye-catching. Even direction from the client has been geared towards “tone it down” rather than the usual “make it pop” feedback. Not coincidentally, I’m currently working on a design concept that resembles a magazine grid rather than the typical flowing content structure of an email.

Is this design shift a reaction to the need for change and simpler times? Are we taking direction from the economy rather than the brand?

Before panic totally sets in, let’s examine this topic a little further from a tactical point-of-view.

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