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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