Next up in the Email Marketing Design Week is the iTunes newsletter. It follows a pretty steady style: it is one of few newsletters that uses light text on dark backgrounds, compared to the more often used dark text on light backgrounds. Here’s a recent example (complete email):
There are several reasons why this is included. One is that, compared to black on white emails, white on black emails attract more attention in the inbox when it comes to the preview pane and/or viewing emails with images still turned off. The human eye is lazy, and is attracked to big, preferably dark areas.
The second thing that stands out is that it actually isn’t a very ‘salesy’ email: only once a price is mentioned. No flashy colors, discounts or anything. This while it is the official iTunes email: it is there to make you buy music, series and apps from the store. They are only using ‘Check it out’ text links or even just the images of albums or series themselves as links.
This all does however give a bit more tightness and seriousness to the email: a no-nonsense style approach to design: something that Apple has been known to apply to everything they do: from the products to the packaging. Remember this video of Microsoft redesigning the Apple iPod packaging? It’s very telling.
All in all, it’s a very tight and light design, easily digestible for the mind.
