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Mittwoch, 2. Mai 2012

Hongkiat.com: 40 Ridiculously Oversized Every Day Objects

Hongkiat.com: 40 Ridiculously Oversized Every Day Objects


40 Ridiculously Oversized Every Day Objects

Posted: 18 Apr 2012 09:01 AM PDT

Seriously, a balloon dog 10 times my size? A giant floppy disk that looks like it has 1 terabyte storage inside? A giant camera, if equipped with flashing light, that could blind me? Heck, all of these mentioned objects actually exists in our world, and they have been adopted by designers worldwide to either attract the mass audience, or show off their heavyweight creativity!

oversized object 40 Ridiculously Oversized Every Day Objects
(Image Source: MAKE)

In today’s post, we’ll let you ponder on the phrase ‘size does matter’ and let you decide if bigger is always better. Here are 40 ridiculously oversized objects, ranging from giant banana peel to gigantic pen covers (yes, you heard me right, pen covers)! So take a break from your hectic design work, and charge up some heavy creativity with this post? Let’s check them out!

3D Glasses. This spectacle could allow a lot of people to watch the same 3D movie at the same time. Provided if their eyes can reach both glasses. (Image Source: Bhavesh Bhuthadia)

3d glasses 40 Ridiculously Oversized Every Day Objects

Ascension. It’s not photoshopped, it’s a real building named as “Ascension”. It was built for the Coachella Music and Arts Festival, in order to spread the message of peace to the visitors, and I believe this gorgeous thing accomplished its mission. (Image Source: Crimson Collective)

ascension 40 Ridiculously Oversized Every Day Objects

Badminton Shuttlecock. Never thought it can be used this way. (Image Source: Neal1960)

badminton shuttlecock 40 Ridiculously Oversized Every Day Objects

Balloon Dog. I never knew that a balloon dog can be this gigantic. This charming piece is created by designer Jeff Koons between 1999-2000, and the size definitely didn’t stop my desire to bring it back to my house! (Image Source: If It’s Hip, It’s Here)

balloon dog 40 Ridiculously Oversized Every Day Objects

Basket Building. Looks exactly like a basket, except that it’s not used to carry sandwiches, but to house humans. (Image Source: Hassle Glad)

basket building 40 Ridiculously Oversized Every Day Objects

Big RMB. I seriously wonder if the value of money will get bigger with the size of the cash. (Image Source: sdelahoyde)

big rmb 40 Ridiculously Oversized Every Day Objects

Big Spills. The ice popsicle is just too real; it even looks delicious! Will you give it a try? (Image Source: Ads of the World)

big spills 40 Ridiculously Oversized Every Day Objects

Big Yellow Rabbit. Probably a toy I can’t afford or keep; it’s 13 meters high. (Image Source: Florentijn Hofman)

big yellow rabbit 40 Ridiculously Oversized Every Day Objects

Christmas Light. Not too big for a big festival like Christmas, huh? (Image Source: corneliskalma)

christmas light 40 Ridiculously Oversized Every Day Objects

Light’s Plug. And it even has a plug! (Image Source: corneliskalma)

lights plug 40 Ridiculously Oversized Every Day Objects

Cleaning. I don’t mind the cleaning, but I probably won’t sit beside the broom, judging from its placement. (Image Source: Phase 1-0 Design)

cleaning 40 Ridiculously Oversized Every Day Objects

Cloth Clip. Fantastic details and that’s gotta hurt, for sure! (Image Source: mmarsupilami)

cloth clip 40 Ridiculously Oversized Every Day Objects

Cottage Cheese Toss. This could definitely be the largest trophy that these players have ever won. Or it could just be an oversized inflatable cottage cheese cup. (Image Source: jerkytourniquet)

cottage cheese toss 40 Ridiculously Oversized Every Day Objects

Dominos. Domino’s dominating. (Image Source: Flowers71)

dominos 40 Ridiculously Oversized Every Day Objects

Floppy Disk. Mother of Floppy Disks (take off spectacles). (Image Source: john4kc)

floppy disk 40 Ridiculously Oversized Every Day Objects

Folding Table and Chairs. What makes these really impressive is the fact that they are greatly detailed! I tip my hat to the creator Robert Therrien. (Image Source: Robert Therrien)

folding table and chairs 40 Ridiculously Oversized Every Day Objects

Table And Four Chairs. Incredibly huge and detailed modern table and chairs; imagine how high the ceiling of this building is! (Image Source: Robert Therrien)

table and four chairs 40 Ridiculously Oversized Every Day Objects

Fork. A big fork made a big difference; what an affordable yet extremely viral advertisement! (Image Source: Ads of the World)

fork 40 Ridiculously Oversized Every Day Objects

Freshness Bags. The green leaves in the shiny bag just made the tree look entirely different from the others on the scene. Brilliant. (Image Source: Ads of the World)

freshness bags 40 Ridiculously Oversized Every Day Objects

Giant Banana Peel. What a realistic banana peel! It was originally created for an eyewear advertisement, and I will say it is really effective, as every detail counts. (Image Source: Ads of the World)

giant banana peel 40 Ridiculously Oversized Every Day Objects

Giant Folder. Every computer user knows about this folder, and the pixelated edges are just awesome. (Image Source: Ads of the World)

giant folder 40 Ridiculously Oversized Every Day Objects

Giant Knife. You better don’t talk to him while he’s slicing something. Great details, and it looks really sharp! (Image Source: Mads Lauritzen)

giant knife 40 Ridiculously Oversized Every Day Objects

Giant Tableware. “Sorry customer, no smaller tableware for you.” Okay, but these are just too precious to be used as tableware! Great work, Mads Lauritzen. (Image Source: Mads Lauritzen)

giant tableware 40 Ridiculously Oversized Every Day Objects

Giant Wood. I wonder how big her left arm is, but anyway, I love the texture, fits perfectly with the object. (Image Source: Mads Lauritzen)

giant wood 40 Ridiculously Oversized Every Day Objects

Hard Rock. This probably saved the hotel owner a lot of budget on advertising. (Image Source: yakul)

hard rock 40 Ridiculously Oversized Every Day Objects

Holga Camera. That’s a huge Holga! I believe if the camera is equipped with the flash light, it could probably cause a person to go blind! Excellent one indeed. (Image Source: MAKE)

holga camera 40 Ridiculously Oversized Every Day Objects

Hong Kong Noodle. Best served while it’s hot! One more point for the tiny chillies, they’re just too real! (Image Source: pia_louise)

hong kong noodle 40 Ridiculously Oversized Every Day Objects

Match. This life-size epic match is in fact the creation of a project, “Macro” by Rómulo Celdrán – “Macro acts as a kind of traditional magnifying glass that draws us closer to the object worthy of observation even when we keep an appropriate distance in order to view it.” (Image Source: Rómulo Celdrán)

match 40 Ridiculously Oversized Every Day Objects

Pen Cover. The detail (and bite marks!) is terrifying! You can compare its size to a regular human’s size here. (Image Source: Rómulo Celdrán)

pen cover 40 Ridiculously Oversized Every Day Objects

Color Paste. I intentionally showcased this photo with the sculptor sitting beside the stuff, or else it’s really unbelievable to gauge just how big this thing is! (Image Source: Rómulo Celdrán)

color paste 40 Ridiculously Oversized Every Day Objects

McMuffin. I will probably go for it, if the McMuffin is as huge as this pack. (Image Source: Ads of the World)

mcmuffin 40 Ridiculously Oversized Every Day Objects

Mouse Trap. Instead of trapping the mouse, it’s more like for trapping a cat. (Image Source: Brady Davidson)

mouse trap 40 Ridiculously Oversized Every Day Objects

“Plenty”. Could easily “chain” through the entire forest within hours. (Image Source: tjwalters13)

plenty 40 Ridiculously Oversized Every Day Objects

Public Purse. Oh, who dropped a purse on the floor? Oh wait. (Image Source: Arts and Culture)

public purse 40 Ridiculously Oversized Every Day Objects

Rubber Duck. I can’t ride it, it’s too adorable! (Image Source: Florentijn Hofman)

rubber duck 40 Ridiculously Oversized Every Day Objects

Shoe. Did you lose a shoe today? But I’m sure that this couldn’t be yours. (Image Source: Sylvain Dumais)

shoe 40 Ridiculously Oversized Every Day Objects

Spoils. The only 2 differences with the real deal are, they are big, and they are amusing. (Image Source: photo.architect)

spoils 40 Ridiculously Oversized Every Day Objects

Thor’s Mighty Hammer. One of the best movie advertisement props I have ever seen, probably far more effective than those poster ads. (Image Source: yakul)

thors mighty hammer 40 Ridiculously Oversized Every Day Objects

Throw Away Fix. “A conceptual work by Brett Oakes, confronts the viewer with a familiar object, a convenience item that has become an environmental inconvenience – the disposable coffee cup.” (Image Source: The Feijoa Fugitive)

throw away fix 40 Ridiculously Oversized Every Day Objects

Two Face. Not really an imitation of the object, but how could we miss the chance to witness this oversized human head, and look at the impeccable detailing! I wonder if the Easter Island head behind has something to do with it. (Image Source: MykReeve)

two face 40 Ridiculously Oversized Every Day Objects

Reflection

It could be really easy to go big just for creativity’s sake, but it takes a lot of intensive hard work to make it stand out, and this can be realized through the details that the sculptors have crafted into their sculptures. Bigger is surely better, but only if you focus on making the bigger object as real as possible, which needs more time and determination than you might think. But of course, don’t forget the amusement and all the fun from creating it!

If you spotted an oversized object, be sure to share it with us! Let’s help make it a fun day!

No related posts.

How to Fix Home Button Delays on iOS Devices [Quicktip]

Posted: 25 Apr 2012 09:57 PM PDT

The home button on iOS devices is made for multipurpose use and most of the time you need it to respond click-fast. Given its multi-function roles: closing an app, returning to home screen, etc, after some time, you may notice that the home button produces a delayed response to clicks, refusing to work as fast as it did when your device was first activated.

home button delays How to Fix Home Button Delays on iOS Devices [Quicktip]

In this quick tip, we will share 2 different ways that you can try to maintain your home button performance. We’re going to use the iPad as examples but take note that the methods work for the iPhone and the iPod Touch as well.

1. Reboot iPad

To reboot your iOS, press the switch button at the top right side of your device until a red button appears on the screen, then slide the red button to the right, to power off your device.

homebutton reboot ipad How to Fix Home Button Delays on iOS Devices [Quicktip]

Press the switch button again to start up your device. This process should reboot the whole device system and fix your home button screen delay.

2. Calibrate Home Button

The other option or ‘trick’ you can do is to calibrate your home button. This action will require interaction with some applications like Calendar, Youtube and Weather. What you should do now is to open any of the mentioned app, and press the switch button until the red slider appears. Once it appears, long press your home button until the red slider disappears.

homebutton calibrate ipad How to Fix Home Button Delays on iOS Devices [Quicktip]

When the slider disappears, your iOS’s home button is now calibrated.

Conclusion

With these 2 simple tricks, the home button of your iOS device should be as responsive as it was before. If you have other ways to get your Home button up to speed, so to speak, share it with us!

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  1. How To Place Digital Signatures On Any Document / Device [Quicktip]
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  3. How to Listen to Music with Friends on Facebook [Quicktip]
  4. How to Browse Your Facebook Like It’s Pinterest [Quicktip]

Dienstag, 1. Mai 2012

Hongkiat.com: Digging into the Secrets of Pinterest: How (and Why) It Works

Hongkiat.com: Digging into the Secrets of Pinterest: How (and Why) It Works


Digging into the Secrets of Pinterest: How (and Why) It Works

Posted: 01 May 2012 09:01 AM PDT

It’s not hard for me to say, or prove, that women dominate Pinterest; the hard part is figuring out why. The statistics to show that the realm built from the simple act of Pinning is dominated by the fairer sex are all over the place. But no matter what the numbers show, it’s not really clear why women are attracted to Pinterest like a moth to a flame.

pinterest Digging into the Secrets of Pinterest: How (and Why) It Works

Sure it’s simple, clean and fuss free and it may be just a digital arts and crafts bulletin board piggybacking off a social phenomenon but while others have good reason to believe that it doesn’t matter which sex dominates the pinning arena, sometimes when you gotta know, you just gotta know.

Getting into Pinterest

The assignment was to dip my toes into the Pinterest pool and test the waters of one of the latest social networks to hit the social media spotlight. The good news is you don’t need an account to view the stuff in Pinterest. But to get your own boards and to start pinning the stuff you like, you need to request for an invite from Pinterest itself or by someone who is already with Pinterest. From the get-go, you get an account to place all your boards, a few suggestions of who to follow, and a "Pin It" button you put on your favourite browser.

this is pin Digging into the Secrets of Pinterest: How (and Why) It Works

Then the pinning begins. Oh, and you don’t even have to be in Pinterest to pin things, which I believe is the beauty and the secret behind the image-hoarding obsession that fuels the pinning passion of millions of Pinners out there. Just use the pinmarklet to pin anything you like seeing on any other site, and it will be showcased on your board. It’s a social media site where you don’t have to stay on your profile page all day long. I find that a very refreshing change.

Pinboards or Virtual Scrapbooks?

As I continued pinning, I realized that there was something familiar with the whole idea behind Pinterest. Something innate, something I have been doing and somehow am redoing. And then it hit me: Pinterest is very much like those magazines you subscribed to when you were a teenager, or maybe even now. You would find Pinterest to exhibit the same type of allure (and more, but we’ll get to that) that you find with topics regularly covered by magazines: wedding gowns, cars, interior décor, parenting, fitness, arts and crafts, gardening, fashion… and the list goes on. And what are the winning qualities of top-selling magazines? The content; more precisely, the images that have to be eye-catching, beautiful, and top-quality to help keep these magazines selling.

pinterest wedding inspiration Digging into the Secrets of Pinterest: How (and Why) It Works
(Image source: Pinterest)

To add on to the theory, together with the shift of print magazines to online subscription models went one of our favourite pastimes – the collection of favourite photos and images from these monthly publications. The snipped pictures would then proceed to fill a fashion tips scrapbook, an album that features our favourite things or when nothing else can do it justice, a spot on the bedroom wall. Admit it, you would plaster your bedroom walls with anything your mom would let you get away with. Some things never go away. They just take another form, like how snipping becomes pinning and scrapbooks became pinboards.

The potential in Pinterest

Pinterest does have its perks, which was what the rest of the Web was interested in from the start. While it has the hallmarks of a social networking site (Likes, Repins and Followers galore), it does boast of a faster pick up in subscribers than its counterparts. More importantly, it drives traffic to sites that bank on visuals to sell its products and its services. Rather than spend time coaxing or coercing people to drop by their site, all the site owners need to do is focus their time and effort into producing highly appealing images that will encourage people to pin the pictures to their boards.

After that, all they to do was wait while the images make their way from one board to the next, penetrating the circles of networks, riding on the most effective marketing channel there is: common interest.

pinterest marketing Digging into the Secrets of Pinterest: How (and Why) It Works

Birds of a feather flock together speaks true of the people who make up the bulk of Pinterest users. If your business caters to moms and teachers, then Pinterest is a dream come true for you. They are already there, all you need to do is to make sure your product images get pinned and shared into their networks. The site also works great for doting parents and/or pet owners, ladies with a passion for style and fashion trends, wannabe and seasoned chefs, mix-and-match hipsters and designers, and luxury item collectors.

not testosterone territory

To answer the question as to why most Pinners are women, it’s not that men aren’t inclined to spend time on Pinterest. It’s just that when they do, like in Manteresting, or Board of Man, the things that turn up pinned are photos of men with smouldering looks or beggar-ish beards, cars, tools, women showing too much skin etc i.e. they bear the marks of the rest of the Internet outside of Pinterest. Why limit yourself to just one social networking site? Besides, take that part out and you get the remainder yet defining pieces of the women-dominated site, Pinterest. Lucky for Pinterest, this takes up about 80% of the site and gives the brand value.

Will Pinterest Stay?

Fine, numbers can rise and fall but there is already a core group communing within the white picket fences of Pinterest, lock and loaded with an extremely large buying power. Modea has a much referred infographic with telling stats: half of all Pinterest users are parents; 68.2% of the total users are women; half of the users fall within the age group of 25 to 44; and a third of the users earn an annual household income of more than 100k.

PinterestUsagebySex Digging into the Secrets of Pinterest: How (and Why) It Works
(Image source: 60secondmarketer)

If I were a retailer and I need to establish an online presence to stay relevant to my potential buyers, or depend on viral marketing to put my product in the market, Pinterest would be my best bet.

Conclusion

It’s a treasure trove for fashion, baking recipes, gardening tips, cosmetics, holiday gifts, endearing snapshots of children, curtain designs and homemade crafts etc – if there is a reason for mothers to join a social networking site, this would be it. I believe we are entering a period when people are tired of being in that weird part of Youtube and finding reality shows that depict the terrible side of life. Having a place that is inspirational, beautiful, fun, and full of potential is a viable alternative many look forward to. Legality issues aside (something every rising social media giant has to deal with sooner or later), if Pinterest can provide that, then by all means, let it flourish and grow.

Related posts:

  1. How to View / Hide Comments on Pinterest [Quicktip]
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  4. 7 Useful Pinterest Tools You Should Know

9 Tricks to Design The Perfect HTML Newsletter

Posted: 26 Apr 2012 01:45 AM PDT

An e-mail newsletter is the perfect way to stay in touch with your clients or followers. Often your company or website will have numerous product updates, or possibly upcoming events you’d like to share. It’s always possible to post new information to your blog or social media streams, but your audience can only go so far to reach you. In this case, e-mail is certainly not dead technology, merely untapped potential.

design perfect newsletter 9 Tricks to Design The Perfect HTML Newsletter

The process of creating and sending out a newsletter is a lot easier than one may think, but to design a custom template and build your own code — this can take a bit longer.

We have compiled some fantastic tips to get you designing high-quality HTML newsletters like never before. Even if you’re a newbie to the subject you’ll surely find some invaluable information to get you started in the e-mail marketing process.

Goals of a Newsletter

Before getting into the design aspects we should clarify your purpose for building a newsletter. Depending on the type of website you run, the information contained in your newsletter may vary dramatically from others, but the core purpose of a newsletter is to deliver convenient updates right to your reader’s Inbox.

Heavy Internet users are likely to check their e-mail more than twice a day. Even those who are constantly busy will take the time to go through their messages at least once a day. This is the perfect time to capture attention even without requiring visits to your site. Even if nobody is clicking through your links, the information is still received, which is great for building a brand name.

Consider some of the topics you would need to offer in your design. Are you including links to signup for your service; possibly blog links, or most recently published articles on your site? The layout of your newsletter will reflect how you wish for your readers to respond, but ultimately you are looking to drum up interest and pass around some interesting tidbits of information to the masses.

1. Utilize Tables in your Layouts

This may seem a bit contradictory towards today’s modern web standards, but e-mails are still archaic in their rendering engines, thus you have to build towards older models. Unfortunately tables are the easiest way to get everything working properly among the various e-mail clients. Depending on your knowledge of building table-based layouts, this might actually come as good news!

You may also wonder why div and other block elements are not such a good idea. Most e-mail clients are built to strip away any extraneous CSS content. This means you won’t be able to use much of anything except for inline CSS (and even full support is shoddy). Clients such as Microsoft Outlook 2007 and Google’s Gmail have very poor support for floated elements and direct positioning.

The best solution would be to nest multiple tables inside each other. Padding and margins are not set to a particular scale between many e-mail clients. This is a reason to stick to using width="value" on all of your table cell elements. These will always display the same width no matter which e-mail client your readers are using, so it’s a lot safer and more consistent to set padding and margins using empty table cells.

2. Fixed-Width Positioning

You have a few options when building the drafts of your newsletter layout, however the best option to follow is to set fixed widths for your containing table. There are many varying monitor resolutions — you won’t be able to please everybody. If you don’t have particular elements with static widths, you could always use width="100%" on your containing table. This will allow your content to fill the entire width of all e-mail clients.

However, for many this method is a little too lax. Constructive newsletters will require a fixed width in most cases, especially if you’ll be using banners and images set to a particular size. I recommend working with 500px – 600px maximum document width. The horizontal screen size of the iPhone and some BlackBerry models are limited to 320px, so even at 500px your e-mail template will be scaled down to fit properly.

Considering that many mobile users choose to view e-mail without HTML anyways, this shouldn’t be a huge problem. Users of desktop and webmail clients will likely experience a similar setup regardless of the Operating System they use. When in doubt create a few template designs and choose the ones you like best!

3. Pixel Units

Unless you’ll be using fluid elements in your newsletter it’s likely that you’ll need to size a few things. Try to keep it in pixels (px) rather than in another type of unit. Percentages can easily get mixed up with the many webmail clients and software windows. With fewer page elements, fluid layouts can come out unscathed, albeit with a few bugs.

But pixels are always a sure thing. Working within the 600px max width limit, you can actually fit a lot of content inside. Exposure is easier if you split your layouts into two or three columns, and always write your sizes in pixels. The only exception may be to font sizes where ems can support your readers better, but em sizing will differ in a similar way percentages would – so for simplicity’s sake, stick to pixel-based alignments.

4. The Possibilities with CSS

It may seem like e-mail design is out to destroy the use of CSS styles. Although there are a lot of unsupported features, CSS is still perfectly acceptable in many cases. Campaign Monitor has a beautiful table of supported CSS properties listed by e-mail client. All will support the basics like font-family and font-style, so you can skip over the <font> tag if you wish.

possibilities with css 9 Tricks to Design The Perfect HTML Newsletter

Be cautious about your font styles as to not push the boundaries too far. If you do feel uncomfortable with inline styles, it’s always possible to use the HTML font tag even though it’s been deprecated. If you’re a CSS designer, you don’t need to quit the system, but any shorthand CSS coding may result in buggy designs. As an example the font: 12px/14px Arial,sans-serif; shorthand can help save a lot of space, but it isn’t fully accepted for e-mail design, even when it’s used with inline styles.

Even your color choices should be written out longhand. Hex colors such as #ccc or #e3f must be written in full as #cccccc or #ee33ff, respectively. If you can build what you need without CSS I would recommend that path, but don’t completely shy away from CSS in e-mail designs because contrary to popular belief it is supported in most cases.

5. Anchor Links Best Practices

You’ll surely want to include some links into your newsletter. These could be outbound links to other pages around the web, or maybe links leading to the most popular pages on your website. Additionally most footers will contain an unsubscribe link for your readers to opt out of the e-mail process, but how should you handle all of these links in your design?

Well it should be noted first that e-mail clients are very finicky with their designs. Many will choose to overwrite your link styles, even with inline CSS. A neat trick is to include both inline color and an additional span tag within the anchor element. If the color and styling of your links are important to the overall design you’ll want to take the extra precaution. I’ve added a small code example below:

<a href="http://www.google.com" style="color:#3147ca;"><span style="color:#3147ca;">some link text</span></a>  

Hover effects are not supported in Outlook 2007/2010, Gmail, iOS or Android. You may still want to include the a:hover style for all supporting clients: Outlook 2000/2003, Hotmail, Apple Mail, and Yahoo! mail, but personally I don’t see much benefit in the partial user experience, since the anchor selectors aren’t heavily supported I recommend just offering 2-3 link colors to use throughout your design.

As a presumption users will also expect your links to open in a new tab or window. Ideally the target="_blank" attribute should be enough for all browsers to recognize this functionality, and the inclusion of this attribute on your anchor links shouldn’t negatively effect e-mail software such as Lotus Notes, or Outlook either.

6. Test in All Major Clients

A recent study of most popular e-mail clients (done by Campaign Monitor) shows ten of the most popular e-mail clients in the past year. It may seem a bit tedious but designers should get into the habit of checking their newsletters on all major e-mail clients, at the very least on some of the more common clients such as Gmail, Hotmail or Yahoo! Mail.

testing in major browsers 9 Tricks to Design The Perfect HTML Newsletter

This doesn’t include webmail solely, but also operating software on both Mac OS X and Windows. Also according to their diagram iOS Mail and Android have both rocketed into the top 10 list over the past few years. In fact iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad Mail ranks the #2 most popular right under Outlook! Unfortunately there isn’t a way to test these without owning one of the devices — so you’ll have to settle with other options.

One bug with the mobile support comes in many iPhone and Android models. Mobile e-mail rendering will often resize the text inside your template. This may not affect your design very much, but it can be annoying to some readers. Using the CSS -webkit-text-size-adjust: none;, will ensure an even default text size throughout all parsing engines without needing to test it.

If you know any friends or colleagues who use alternative software, you may wish to ask for their help on testing the newsletter. You can either send them a copy of the e-mail to check on their device or borrow the device to actively clear out coding bugs. Luckily Outlook does offer a Mac install version so you won’t need to track down a Windows user for those optimizations, but when it comes to Lotus Notes or Windows Mail, you may be out of luck.

The alternative is to pay for a solution such as Preview my E-mail, unfortunately they do not provide any free demo accounts, but their service is well renowned for offering terrific previews of your design. E-mail on Acid is a similar service which does offer a free account but does not let you test on all clients, which kind of defeats the purpose. Online rendering services should be useful if you need to test many newsletter templates over the long run without the use of alternate computers, however they are not fundamental, so don’t stress if you can’t test them all!

7. Always Offer Web-Based Views

Readers won’t always be able (or be willing) to view your e-mail natively. Offering another version somewhere on the Web will give a sense of ease and compatibility. This process can’t be completely automated unless you’re looking to include a plain text version.

This way, you would strip all HTML tags from the newsletter layout. You wouldn’t be able to include links or styles for anything. All content would simply be laid out as a plain text file for readers without the rendering capabilities. This is certainly a good alternative, but when you offer a full Web version of the same newsletter it takes away the damage done by any rendering bug. Most readers will be running an up-to-date Web browser which you can style and build your newsletter on and to perfection.

How you set up the page is entirely your choice. Some websites will dedicate an entire blog post to duplicating the e-mail’s content, maybe with some additional information. Others will create a separate page off the main website without any direct links in the navigation. This method can be beneficial since readers won’t be distracted by your main website template or sidebar content.

8. Adding Image Content

Images are another reason to offer your readers a web-based solution. By default, e-mail clients are set to strip images out of the content. If your address is added to a safe list, all images will be displayed by default, but the user has to accept this setup so it’s certainly not a guarantee. Just make sure images aren’t required as part of the main content, but included as an extra topping for page aesthetics.

Once you get to exporting graphics there are a few tips to building images specifically for e-mail. You’ll want to always set both width and height attributes on your img tags. Without these specifications in order, some clients will distort the image content. An alt tag will also prove useful, so visitors will know what the image content contains before it’s loaded.

As mentioned before, positioning the images in your e-mail can get tricky. Avoid using floats at all costs! The image align="left" attribute will work much better, or alternatively map out exact table cells to fit your images along the top, left, or right side of your newsletter. You won’t be able to get a perfect match-up with so many clients out there (especially mobile clients), but optimize your images and keep file sizes small for best results.

As for image storage, it’s recommended that you keep all files in your own Web server. This is the better option instead of using another image host, or by uploading the files to an online newsletter service. Additionally you should separate the content for your newsletters away from the rest of your images in a folder structure like so /img/email or /img/email/2011.

9. Avoid the Spam Folder!

This can be difficult to hear, but not all e-mail clients are friendly towards newsletters. There are billions of e-mails sent every day and the majority contain spam or malicious content, thus having these security measures built into the Inbox is clearly for safety precautions.

However when it comes to Internet marketing, you can easily be discouraged to see your latest newsletter end up with the junk. To reduce the chances of this happening you should clean up your design for simplicity. Don’t make annoying images or blow up your title text with hundreds of keywords.

There is certainly a solution for every issue, for instance, this handy spam checker processes your e-mails for any misguided errors. You’ll receive a report outlining the possible issues your newsletter may face in the many inboxes it’ll land in.

Also try to keep your content brief and on-topic. You don’t need to include full content for all of your articles or pages. Try adding a sentence or two with an alternate link out to your website in place of a long listing. The more brief your e-mail looks, the more likely it’ll pass spam inspection.

Newsletter Design Gallery

What fun would an e-mail newsletter article be without some fantastic examples? There are tons of e-mail newsletter designs and templates to check out in Google. HTML E-mail Gallery is a very popular source for inspiration.

Below I’ve included screenshots from the many newsletters in Campaign Monitor’s gallery. Hopefully these terrific layouts can provide you with some great ideas for your own designs.

Have fun designing your ideal newsletters!

Alertful for Business

alertful for business 9 Tricks to Design The Perfect HTML Newsletter

MarketSpace

marketspace 9 Tricks to Design The Perfect HTML Newsletter

New Forest Cookery School

new forest cookery school 9 Tricks to Design The Perfect HTML Newsletter

Big Cartel

big cartel 9 Tricks to Design The Perfect HTML Newsletter

Flexibits

flexibits 9 Tricks to Design The Perfect HTML Newsletter

WooJobs

woojobs 9 Tricks to Design The Perfect HTML Newsletter

Sprowt

sprowt 9 Tricks to Design The Perfect HTML Newsletter

Webfit

webfit 9 Tricks to Design The Perfect HTML Newsletter

highbullen

highbullen 9 Tricks to Design The Perfect HTML Newsletter

Code my Concept

code my concept 9 Tricks to Design The Perfect HTML Newsletter

Beckett’s Foods

becketts foods 9 Tricks to Design The Perfect HTML Newsletter

Catch Digital

catch digital 9 Tricks to Design The Perfect HTML Newsletter

WOOF Creative

woof creative 9 Tricks to Design The Perfect HTML Newsletter

Appstrakt

appstrakt 9 Tricks to Design The Perfect HTML Newsletter

Wild Thyme

wild thyme 9 Tricks to Design The Perfect HTML Newsletter

StruckAxiom

struckaxiom 9 Tricks to Design The Perfect HTML Newsletter

Hochsaison

hochsaison 9 Tricks to Design The Perfect HTML Newsletter

Beal Creative

beal creative 9 Tricks to Design The Perfect HTML Newsletter

ActiveSmart

activesmart 9 Tricks to Design The Perfect HTML Newsletter

Sheen Media

sheen media 9 Tricks to Design The Perfect HTML Newsletter

IntuitionHQ

intuitionhq 9 Tricks to Design The Perfect HTML Newsletter

Brulee Patisserie

brulee patisserie 9 Tricks to Design The Perfect HTML Newsletter

Virb

virb 9 Tricks to Design The Perfect HTML Newsletter

ManoverBoard

manoverboard 9 Tricks to Design The Perfect HTML Newsletter

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