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Today’s entry from Openluchttheater is a colorful and eye catching promotional newsletter. Rather than take up a lot of the limited vertical space, the designer has run the branding in a strip down the left hand side. That means the content appears right up the top, even in the smallest preview pane.

Even with the images not downloaded, it is easily read and maintains a scannable structure. Finally, each section ends with a very clear ‘TICKETS’ link, making the next step obvious. 

We’re definitely “feeling the love” with this design from Studio Bomba for their stationary branch, Mitchell and Dent. Not only is the design nicely done, but one should really take a moment to experience the playful copy as well. Peppered with captivating images, the layout is both airy and light which provides ample spacing for the content as well as a convenient table of contents. A nice addition would be to bump up the font size a point or two and really show off the lyrical brilliance.

We also enjoyed the purposeful way Mitchell & Dent integrated the unsubscribe and forward pieces into the theme of the email. “Share the love and forward to a friend”. Being standard elements for an email, its easy to overlook the fact that these can be fun and engaging to the reader as well.  Overall, a fun and well thought out piece!

Using some design queues gleaned from our very own case studies, the creative tribe over at Carbon have come up with a very simple and effective email. First off, we really liked the fact they went for bold use of text instead of using images. The bright, purple title expresses the fact Carbon has a new look, simply put. Then, as a way to visually mimic the “de-emphasizing” of the text in question, the second part of the message is simply, light gray. A brilliant use of typography! Following, they give a short bit about their work including clear links and some vital contact information all the way to the footer. To sum it up in the words of the Carbon folks - “Bam!  There you go”!

Feast your eyes on this stylish email by Wordplay Media. The layout is brilliant, with just enough photos to keep it interesting and color blocks to organize an otherwise, quite lengthy, email. Along with the large headers, the blocks of color create a richness that is not only functional, but easy on the eyes as well.

We especially liked the small touch with the 3D-like footer image at the end of each section. It brings a nice separation while giving a kick to the content block.  The only thing we would have changed here would be to have the headers in actual text and separate them from those images. When images are turned off, the headers go away.  Overall, the email degrades with excellent grace.

Moving down to the end, the footer is quite nice with the Forward and Unsubscribe information being very clear and sized well.  They even saved room for a permission reminder in that small box.  All in all, this email by Wordplay is well thought out packing tons of information and creativity into a great campaign.

This very sleek and stylish email campaign from Australian design studio Buro North is the absolute epitome of cool in my opinion; from the dark, alluring background coupled by its ‘white noise’ surround and sexy blue highlights, I feel like I’m walking into an elite underground club filled with supermodels and celebrities every time I open up my email client. It’s that seductive.

The background image is complimentary yet untroubling; the text is fashionably small yet legible; the design contains a good amount of whitespace yet is not wasteful, and images are employed sparsely but to great effect.

I see a lot of campaigns employing a simple, minimalistic style, and I happen to like this approach a lot, however many start to look the same after a while, however Buro North have really nailed this email design ‘genre’ here, creating a dramatic, calming and creative campaign which speaks volumes about them as a design studio, even before you read the first word of their content.

While sifting through campaigns the other day, the interesting color scheme of this email newsletter from Savvy.je caught my eye. The combination of teal and maroon is not something you see everyday and really makes this email stand out from the rest.

The application of these colors is not used sparingly, but that really works well for the design. The news items are boxed out by solid columns of alternating colors, making each news snippet clear and easy to read. Additionally, the columns come close to covering the entire height of the campaign itself, which gives the campaign a very solid, rigid look.

We thought this campaign for Like.ie was pretty cool. The text is big and well spaced, making it easy to read and the colors are soft and are gentle on the eye. Although the campaign does pass when images are suppressed, we feel that having the call to action buttons as images can be a bit risky if they disappear completely when no alt text is assigned. That said, the phone numbers and the subscribe and visit our website links at the bottom are still visible if a subscriber wants to know more. Overall, a nice design.

What really caught our eye with this campaign from Propel Youth Arts by Papercut Media was the navigation. The content split up into respective blocks that are linked from the menu to the left of the opening content. Easy to get back to the start too so you don’t get lost. The bold blue colour helps the reader to distinguish the content areas. The iconography associated to each area is quite a nice touch too.

A couple of considerations for this template would be to look at using text for the navigation rather than images. As when images are disabled, it’s not totally clear there is navigation available. Also, a permission reminder at the very top of the campaign wouldn’t go amiss. Just to show who it’s from and why, as the brands only noticeable if the images are enabled.

Overall though, a nice looking campaign that is easy to read and navigate.