Gallery: Announcement

The guys at WooThemes have made a bold move with this design for their new WooJobs newsletter. The layout uses div elements rather than tables, which we don’t normally recommend due to the lack of support in email clients, but for simple single-column layouts like this they can work just fine.

The CSS3 rounded corners, box and text shadows are a nice touch for those who can view them and subtle enough that it doesn’t affect the design for those who can’t. With a flexible, fluid width and mobile-specific CSS, the design fits snugly in any desktop or mobile email client. This is a campaign worthy of what designers and developers have come to expect from WooThemes.

Don’t miss their new WooJobs job board to advertise your own skills.

There is absolutely nothing humble about a bacon sandwich. Delicious—yes, mouthwatering—sure, and to the vegetarians among us—disgusting…but let’s not focus on that. In essence, it’s anything but humble.

The same goes for this great email from Rock Kitchen Harris for Beckett’s Foods. It’s awash in classic simplicity, with the single column of text and standard layout. With the adorable cartoon pigs on the bright orange background, it’s just bursting with high playful notes and is totally delightful.

I completely love how well it holds up without images as well. In fact, try viewing it that way if you’re hungry, you’ll thank me.

This itinerary of events for the Music Centre de Bijloke in Gent, Belgium (designed by Didier Deschrijver) has a bold, simple layout which presents the information clearly and concisely. Additionally, it has been designed with the Center's high contrast, black, white and yellow color scheme, which succeeds well in capturing the subscriber's attention in the first place.

We love seeing web version and unsubscribe links at the top of emails, presented here on a neat, gray background that helps to separate it from the rest of the content.

The Belgium design firm known as Cowboys and Indians has another company called Appstrakt, which they’ve created this clever campaign for. Appstrakt develops applications on a variety of platforms - not just mobile, either. You can get a sense of their multi-faceted design/code skills by viewing this campaign for email and then taking a look at the matching website (and BTW, they’re looking for developers).

Each app is uniquely tailored to its specific platform, but when versions exist for a variety of devices, each version still maintains a similar look and feel. In a similar manner, this email design replicates the finer details from their website, such as the background textures, but uses web text where possible - especially helpful is the headline at the top. The campaign fits snugly in an email client, but also stretches horizontally for the webversion, making it look like a website when viewed in a browser. Also take note of the language selection links, for accommodating Dutch/Belgian subscribers.

Finally, we’d advise against using a URL in link text, but overall this is an A+ campaign.

This email announcement designed by The Wedding Company and Whitespace is simple, elegant, and yes, I’m going to say it: minty fresh. The design is appropriately reminiscent of a wedding invitation and the content is well organized, making sure the change of location banner is immediately obvious, but also delivering more information than just a simple “we’ve moved” message.

That said, the body copy is a touch on the small size and many of the headings and sub headings could have been easily displayed with web text. The map featured below-the-fold could also be linked to a Google map, for ease of use. But thankfully, there’s an abundance of ALT text to make up for these oversights and overall, this design would be a pleasure to receive in any inbox.

This homegrown email does what exactly what it should be doing - showcasing the fabulous photography of Kate and Luke Gerson. They did design the email themselves; so way to go! The content is intimate and to the point; giving a short personal update and announcing a refresh to their website, as well as giving a clear way for the viewer to get more information.

The simple white background and gentle grey text help make the gorgeous sea colors in the photos pop. However, there may be a few too many photos, just three or four would probably be enough to entice the viewers to head to the web site for more “photo goodness”.

This modern email design comes to us from designers Inventis for I/Object. It’s the kind of design that focuses on imagery with a punch and a super clean and readable layout. That leading image immediately grabs your attention, doesn’t it?

The rest of the email has those little graphical touches and details (like the adorned headings) that take it from something that could come off as too plain, to really great. Of course, these headings could be actual web text, but thankfully Inventis have used ALT text to make up for this.

This introductory email to qnorthern by Stu Bamforth is neat and tidy with a strong element of intrigue. It may be the dark, mysterious color scheme - or the curious lighthouse photo - that creates a sense of wanting to know more that encourages the viewer to read on.

Functionality-wise, it’s nice to see a text unsubscribe link at the bottom of the email too incase the side bar image links don’t load. A recommendation would be to move the webversion to the top of the email, so recipients need not scroll through to the bottom of the design if they wish to use the link.

My favorite thing about this design by Shift is the mostly neutral gray color scheme that is punctuated by bursts of color, making the links really stand out. The stunning and timely imagery draws the reader into the content of the email. The layout is narrow and faithful to the grid, creating an email that is balanced and easy to read and scan.

The opinionated attitude in the copy is charming, there’s no stiff writing here, although I have to disagree about the bit they say about white chocolate being an insult to mankind; these are yummy no matter what they say.