Mixing Business with Pleasure

As a makeup artist, it's been such a
pleasure to immerse myself in the world of luxury products as part of my day job. I get to see the new trends as they happen, and even get try some of the best products in the industry. On the odd occasion I've helped out in our stores when events get busy, and people need to be dolled up. It's a dream job for me.

Safe to say, my makeup emails have always been some of my favourites to create - no harm in mixing a little business with pleasure. With the right imagery, and sexiest descriptions, who wouldn't want to buy these products!

My New Years Eve Beauty email is another favourite.

Email Development

During my time at any company,
I am constantly revising and reworking the generic email templates that I use to ensure they always embody the best features to enhance the brand's image. Keeping designs fresh is the key to keeping customers interested - they always need to feel like they are viewing something new and different, rather than the same email churned out again and again. As an example I have looked at how the Space NK emails have changed during my first 12 months. A second example are our Valentine's emails from 2010 and 2011 - click here.

Wedding Project

One of my favourite projects at
Space NK was during wedding season, in June 2010. I suggested doing a 2-part wedding special, talking about how to prep-and-prepare your skin, and then how to create a
gorgeous, big-day look. My background in makeup artisty enabled me to select a gorgeous product erray, and I styled the email to resemble a tasteful, elegant invitation. It had a great response. Click to see emails.

Just a bit of Graphics...

I've spent some time working on graphics and design skills in the last year. Here are just a couple of my favourite items:

Turquoise Eye:


Metal Sphere:


Business Cards:

Awards

This is a small selection of Awards emails I have put together, simply by using the campaign creative.

The Broadcast Awards' website had this groovy top detail of the CMYK Press Bar dripping down, so I continued this down the page and met it up with a repeat image at the base. On the black background this email is particularly striking. The PDF unfortunately prevents
you from seeing the animation of the
"Enter Now" detail at the top.


The Lighting Design Awards email again used the creative to top-and-tail the design, as well as providing a vibrant colour scheme. This was then mimicked inside to create a housing box for the sponsor logos.


The Glee Awards email has been split into two bubble sections, one for the title and one for the content. This is just a different way of laying out the email, and doesn't work with all creative. The Glee Awards Logo was very simple and so I developed an exciting header that sat better away from the text. However it is all tied together nicely with matching borders around the sections.

General "Inform" Emails

Here are some of my favourite email templates to date.

The Drapers email is fairly simple and therefore very aesthetically pleasing. The layout reflects the magazine's cover and the colour scheme was taken from the creative. The email is made up of a series of images as backgrounds, and then tables are used to position the text
away from the edges. I personally have
found this the easiest way to put
together this type of design.


The shots email is very busy, yet is exactly what they like. The magazine contents page itself is a confusing collage of images and words, so in comparison this email is fairly tame. The header is put together from sections of the magazine cover, with the magazine spine used to detail the date and issue number.


The Retail Jeweller email is another simplistic style, but with soft gradients to create a sophisticated look. This magazine has very little campaign branding, and therefore it's always safest to pick out a feature - in this case the wallpaper - and keep all the other details very low key. The look and feel is very much aimed at the target audience of Jewellery Retailers.

Two More Simple Designs

I wanted to example some other designs techniques I have created, for simplistic "inform" emails.

This Broadcast email is not very exciting, but I wanted to example the use of Branded Backgrounds. It works well in two-tone, and does not detract
from the email content but instead helps
it stand out.


The second is very colourful, to emanate the theme of Children's Education and uses lots of the campaign branding to make it more interesting aesthetically. The content alone would be very dull, however the colours and layout make it more appealing to read.