What is email design?
Written by the studio that designs and codes these emails every week — with real examples from client programmes.
It combines four disciplines: strategy (what the email must achieve), design (layout and hierarchy), copy structure, and specialist HTML coding — because email clients render code inconsistently, requiring table-based techniques web design abandoned years ago.
In practice it covers four things: strategy (what should this email achieve and for whom), design (layout, hierarchy, brand expression), copy structure (scannable, action-driving content order) and code (HTML that renders correctly in every inbox). Miss any one and results suffer.
Why it's a specialist skill
Email rendering is stuck in 2005 — no flexbox, no modern CSS, wildly inconsistent client support. Outlook uses Word's rendering engine. Gmail strips embedded styles. Dark mode inverts colours unpredictably. That's why email is designed and coded differently from web pages, using table-based layouts and defensive techniques refined over years.
What good looks like
- Renders correctly across 60+ email clients
- Loads fast and reads clearly on mobile
- Survives dark mode with brand intact
- Accessible to screen readers
- Looks unmistakably like your brand
See our service page for how we deliver it, or real examples from client programmes.
Your options for what is email design, compared.
| Template galleries | Cheap marketplaces | EmailDesign | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Custom design (not a reskin) | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Hand-coded, tested HTML | ✗ | Rarely | ✓ 60+ clients |
| Outlook & dark mode handled | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Set live in your platform | ✗ | Extra cost | ✓ Included |
| Fixed quote before work starts | n/a | Varies | ✓ Always |
| One accountable studio | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
Built for the platform you already use.
Every project is designed for your platform's editor and set live in your account — see Klaviyo email design or Mailchimp templates.
What you receive with the done-for-you version.
Keep reading.
Who is EmailDesign?
A UK email design and development studio. We design custom emails, hand-code the HTML and set everything live in platforms like Klaviyo and Mailchimp — from £95 per email.
Can you do this for us?
Yes — this topic maps directly to our services. Get a fixed quote within one working day.
Ready when you are.
Tell us what you're sending and where — fixed quote within one working day.