Inboxes can get boring. Bold (but cleverly designed) emails are my ticket to making sure people want to open them every. damn. time. I've been designing emails for nearly 10 years now and no platform has been easier for me and my clients to use than Flodesk [🔗]. 

Why?

☻  No Photoshop needed

☻  Premade templates (actually good)

☻  Ever-expanding features

☻  Flat rate: No penalty for more subscribers

☻  50% off your first year [🔗]

☻  Bonus: it's women-owned

How I jazz things up ✿✿✿✿✿ ↴

What do I mean by that? Think your go-to colours, font combos, filters you use on images, gradients, borders, round corners, stuff like that. 

Brands who have this figured out before they start designing know that they have an aesthetic framework to build from that's authentic to who they are and consistent to how they show up online.

Be sure to:

☞  Drop in your fonts (2-3 is great)
☞  Drop in your colours

☞  Have your accents on hand  

Don’t have any design accents like icons, illustrations and cool fonts? Get some here [🔗]

When it comes to maximalism and trendy modern typography, the bolder is better. 

Here's what I do everyyyy time:

☞  Make sure there’s big contrast between headings and paragraph size

☞  Always use the 'Custom Font' layout for headings if you don't want to be limited by websafe fonts

☞  Use a 3rd font for subheadings, in the same size as your paragraph font (but maybe in all caps and bolder)

☞  Consider adding two different fonts in the one heading

✦   You can do this just by highlighting part of it and changing the styling options for that text

Everybody loves GIFs and people who don't, well... they probably don't belong on my website. LOL. Flodesk actually has a direct integration with GIPHY! The movement on the page is just plain fun and it's a great excuse to inject a little pop culture humour, if it's on-brand for you.

☞  I tend to use these to divide up the page

☞  They're great way to break up the design
☞  I like to keep them quite small

✦   Note they can't be used in layout blocks

☞  I always search with the word “sticker” on the end so I get shown transparent background ones

Just don’t use too many, as it’ll become too megabyte heavy and potentially send you to spam. Image optimisation is crucial 〰everywhere〰 on the web!

Let’s face it, Flodesk can’t do EVERYTHING. 

☞  If you create fun collages or super edited images for your website or socials, bring them in here

☞  Your emails should be a direct reflection of your aesthetics everywhere else!

☞  Opt for the more 'collage' style layouts to get this effect without leaving Flodesk

☞  Canva and Unfold app [🔗] are also great to play with

Layouts are one of the best features of Flodesk. However, if you spend a little more time with them, you'll realise you can actually get some really unique looks out of each one. Each layout comes with varying levels of customisability. 

☞  Experiment with image shapes

☞  Unexpected text alignment

☞  Utilising all your fonts

☞  Contrasting colours

☞  Or removing colour backgrounds for a floating look

Flodesk allows you to change the colour of any section really easily, so have fun with it.

☞  I prefer to keep the text all the same colour so it looks cohesive

☞  Don’t fear gaps! Negative space is a basic design principle for a reason

☞  People are conditioned to scroll

☞  These choices allow the eye to distinguish messages and read easily

I really don't like rules and one of my favourite way to force fun into text is to utilise the sh*t out of my emoji  keyboard. To access it on Apple keyboards, you can press the 🌐 button on the bottom left, or older keyboards is ^ ⌘ space bar. There's also apps for your phone.

☞  In there, you'll find searchable stuff like: 

✦  Superscript letters and numbers

✦  Gothic letters

✦  Script letters
✦  Unicode symbols

☞  Just note that you can only use these characters in a Custom Font Layout Block

✦   It won't work in a normal text block

☞  If emojis are more on-brand for you, go for it

✦   Note that in browsers like Gmail (that's most people), they'll revert to the PC version of emoji (less cool)

☞ With my formatting on Flodesk, I prefer not to utilise the 'bold' button

☞  Instead, use a heavier weight of that same font 

✦  i.e. A combo of light and medium Helvetica, is nice for paragraphs for example

Be consistent  

☞  Utilise the DUPLICATE function so you don’t have to re-set up your blocks every single time! 

Create an amazing design?  

☞  Save it as a template and re-use it as a base for next time.

Your subject line  

☞  Should be punchy and your preview text no different! After all, we want them to actually see this incred design you’ve made. Check your links, send a test email et voila! 

Knock their socks off and keep sending regularly to show people that your killer designed content is something they should look forward to on the reg. 

♡

Made something cool? Show me. 

Stuck on something? DM me. 

Have fun,

Katie