Throwback Thursday: The evolution of email creative over the last decade

Written by Lili Boev, member of the Email Council and Director of Client Success at Vuture.

Stranger Things, bomber jackets, chokers and (sadly) mullets throw me into spirals of nostalgia about the 80s and 90s. This nostalgia, along with Spotify’s Throwback Thursday playlist, got me thinking about the earlier years of email and the evolution of email design.

So, I took a trip down digital memory lane to the earliest emails in my gmail account. The first email I ever received was in October 2004, a mere five months after gmail was launched! It’s hard to imagine a world before gmail. Over a year later, in November 2005, I received my very first newsletter. It was from my university student union was, and it was completely text based.

During my search of the simpler times it was quite tricky to find emails that still rendered with all their images. However, I did manage to find a selection and the results are fascinating. The companies I’ve included are Ticketmaster, Apple, BFI, Sugru, Qantas, Made and Groupon. To journey through the evolution of email you can click on the links above or on the thumbnails at the bottom of this post.

Overall composition and layout

• The first thing that struck me was how much less cluttered emails have become. Recent emails use more white or negative space between content blocks. It appears that the desire to cram everything and the kitchen sink into the email has waned over the years.
• The structure of the emails is also simpler. Most of the emails have evolved from three or four column layouts to one or two columns.

Typography and Copy

• The second thing that stands out, which ties in with the reduction in clutter, is a reduction in copy. Microcopy has become more commonplace in email creative. For some of these emails, other than the headline there is very little or no body copy. Footer text has also reduced significantly across all email.
• The way these companies use preheader text seems to vary. One consistent trend is the addition of the preheader preview text. This is the text that previews in the inbox as an extension of the subject line.
• Text based calls to action have evolved over the years into calls to action that look more like a button.
• Social media icons in emails dating before 2012 mention the words “Facebook” and “Twitter”. In more recent emails you only see the icons and no actual text as their logos have become ubiquitous.

Photography and artwork

• My third observation is that photography has improved significantly. This is not the case for Apple and Made, as their photography was great to start with. The size of the images has also increased over the years.
• Hero banners have also been more widely adopted across the companies I looked at.

Colour and design elements

• My final observation is the shift towards a grey or white background. In every example I saw, if they weren’t already using grey or white they all were by the end.
• Outlines, gradients, bevels and drop shadows were all very popular. Now, block colours, no shadows and white space are most commonly used.
• Curved corners on content blocks and buttons were also popular in the past. But again, in recent emails there is a trend towards straight corners.

Simplification and readability underpin the evolution in email design over the last decade. And I don’t think there’s anyone reading this that would dispute the question of why this evolution has occurred. The rise of the smartphone has fundamentally changed the way in which we live. From the way in which we consume information to the way in which we communicate. It’s forced companies to think more carefully and strategically about how they deliver content to their recipients. In my opinion this has significantly improved the way emails look, the way we interact with them and our perception of email as a channel of communication.

See how the following brands creative has evolved below:

• Apple
• BFI
• Groupon
• MADE
• Qantas
• Sugru
• Ticketmaster

For more information on creativity in email please review the DMA Email Best Practice Guide.