Email and graphic design

The notion of graphic arts is very wide and very old. Its last born being the notion of web design, digital design, or call it what you want :-). Graphic arts have existed since the dawn of time and, without going into a detailed chronology, their appearance goes back a long way, since we can already talk about graphic arts on the walls of cavemen. This article is going to focus on something more recent: the current graphic design, more particularly the email design and "paper" graphics

Graphic
From Latin graphicus, from ancient Greek, graphikós, from, graphê ("writing").
Who represents by the drawing.
-ism
From the ancient Greek -ismós, which gave rise to -ismus in Latin.
Used to form a name for a doctrine, dogma, ideology or theory, whether religious, political or scientific

The definition that is generally found is the following:

"Graphic arts designate all the processes proper to the visual conception and staging of an artistic creation, using different techniques (writing, typography, drawing, painting, engraving and printmaking, photography...), this creation being able to be used for solely artistic, industrial or commercial purposes (advertising messages, publishing, posters, magazines, etc.)."

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It is thus a question of producing something of visualwhich can be laid on a supportOr communication (in the broadest sense), commercial or not: logo, propaganda poster, advertisement, ...
As time went on, with technological developments, additional aspects appeared, notably movement (television) and interaction (internet).
It is a very, very broad concept, including a large number of professions (illustrator, web designer, typographer, photographer, etc.).

What interests us here is contemporary graphic design, in particular the email design.
A number of clients - even art directors or graphic designers - forget that email design is significantly different from the design found on other media and will not adapt their paper graphic communication accordingly.
There are three fundamental differences between email design and paper design:

1. In paper design, the graphic message is liabilitiesIn the case of email, we wish to inform someone, without the latter having the possibility to interact with the message. In the email, beyond the notion of information, the graphics are essentially used to push the reader to a action.
   At first a click to redirect to the website and then a more advanced action (purchase, answer to a form, ...). This notion of interaction that did not exist before is fundamental; it means that the very objective of the communication is different, and it is therefore important to adapt the way of communicating accordingly; it is therefore necessary to be extremely clear in the calls to action and highlight them.
2. In the world of email, readers are generally over-solicited. Who has never had their inbox overflowing with notifications or commercial messages that will never be read?
   It is therefore necessary to arrive at a first stage to capture the attention of the reader (via a trusted sender and a relevant subject line) and then keep their attention long enough to deliver your message and submit your call to action. In a study by Microsoft published in 2015, the average attention time measured was 10 seconds... It will therefore be necessary to have simple messages that go straight to the point, and a graphic design that serves this purpose. One of the most common mistakes is to try to deliver too many messages at once, losing the attention of the reader. Another mistake is to put the creative and graphic side before the "utilitarian" side. It is not a question of forgetting the graphics, but if the graphics take precedence, you risk losing the attention of certain readers, thus diminishing your results. It is therefore important to keep a simple and clear message at first glance. Several techniques can help (inverted pyramid, single column, ... ), detailing them will perhaps be the subject of a future article :-).
3. Where paper design is technically limited by the constraints of the material world (paper size, ink colors, ...) email design is limited by the HTML code and how it will be interpreted by the different email clients as well as by the constraints of the mobile world.
   If it is always possible to get around this difficulty by creating an HTML all in images, it remains inadvisable. Not so much because of the fear of being spammed because of the text to image ratio, but because of the user experience. A number of email clients do not display images by default; if your email is all images, it will require an action from the reader before seeing your message, and you will statistically lose some of your audience at this stage. A second reason is loading time. If your email is made up entirely of images, these images will have to be of excellent quality so as not to lose readability, and therefore they will probably be heavier to load, which will impact the time needed to display your message, especially on mobile.

3 differences fundamental So, they explain that the jobs of paper designer and web designer are different, and that they are jobs in their own right. The objective of graphic design is to "connect" with the reader through a feeling; this requires work and, above all, experience. You can't become a graphic designer overnight.
As an agency, we immediately spot email designs we receive that come from a paper-based designer, and we can predict bad results quite easily. We also occasionally get designs that have been imposed by the client's marketing department, with probably what some people think is the most relevant in terms of graphic communication, but which does not take into account the opinion of a designer. For the metaphor: you will rarely explain to a surgeon how he should operate on you because you think your opinion is better than his. If the example is obvious in the case of the surgeon, it is probably less obvious in the case of the designer because the result seems abstract and less technically advanced. But the advantage in marketing, unlike medicine, is that you can easily do some tests So if there are two different designs in competition, don't hesitate to test them! Because in any case, you will also need to gain expertise on the population you want to reach. The design used to sell luxury watches will probably be significantly different than for yogurt promotions...

Paper graphics and web design are professions that have similar origins but have evolved differently, either because of the objective to be reached or the techniques used. What about you? What is your experience in terms of design? Do you do testing? Do you adopt a minimalist or very graphic design?
And don't forget, Badsender offers (among others) create the design of your emails 😉