Finding Inspiration

Keeping your email designs and layouts fresh and interesting is tough! One learns quickly that in the world of email design, there are many technical constraints and best practices that can make your options for design seem limited. We’d like to think we have glorious ideas just pouring out of our ears, but let’s face it – this isn’t always the case. For those times you find yourself sitting in front of a blank screen with an equally blank mind, here are a couple suggestions on keeping those email design ideas flowing.

Try subscribing to a few of your competitors’ & partners’ email programs, and even emails unrelated to your industry. Don’t simply copy what they do (I see this all too often), but take notes on interesting bits and pieces they incorporate into their designs and content. Try testing some of these out in your own campaigns. I frequently find myself stopping to admire and study the layout, art or code behind all sorts of marketing emails in my inbox.

If you’re working on a design and it’s not turning out to be what you had hoped, put it away for a while – clear your head and work on something else for a couple of hours. Once you come back to it, you may notice something that needs changing or some errors you didn’t see before. If you’re on a tight deadline and don’t have an hour or two to spare, have an honest coworker take a look at it – outside critique is valuable.

Lastly, if I’m having trouble finding inspiration, I’ll take some time to look through design blogs, books & resources. Example is always the best teacher, and Spam Meltdown has a lot of email examples in sorted categories. While Ideabook.com has lots of resources and tutorials on print layouts, it certainly helps to get my gears turning on email designs. Checking out original and interesting art and designs in other mediums helps me to think outside the box. If you’re testing your email content, you may find that breaking the rules a bit can be just what you needed.

Design is everywhere; if you train yourself to see and analyze it, finding inspiration for the work you do will come a lot easier!

Celeste Odell | Design Services