Re-branding a popular weekly digest
Creative exploration and design library development
Litmus is well-known as a community resource for marketers, designers and developers. Regular reports, webinars and blog content is created around popular email marketing topics and Litmus Weekly is a digest email that compiles this content, along with resources from around the web. Although the audience for this email was already highly engaged, the design hadn't been altered in some time, so it was important to consider ways to re-fresh the layout, that wouldn't overwhelm the subscriber.
Landing on a logo
As an initial deliverable I was tasked with creating an identity, something to set this email apart from other communications in subscriber inboxes, including further Litmus emails they could be signed up to.
Working with brand fonts and colours to explore creative solutions that would give Litmus Weekly a fresh, new identity.
With this weekly newsletter intended to be a fun, easy to consume read, and with the audience predominantly email practitioners (designers & developers), I was keen to create an identity that would compliment the simplicity of the layout. After exploring a number of options, a solution using geometric shapes was chosen.
Iconography exploration
The Litmus brand identity was evolving, new product features were launching and the target audience was expanding. These changes set about a phase of design exploration, and an opportunity to develop new creative assets including iconography. These could then be tested, iterated upon and potentially tied into new brand documentation.
Layout and content heirarchy
The original email was styled as a list of text links, and it was clear from engagement data that this format worked well for the audience. To evolve this experience I considered ways to apply content hierarchy whilst being sympathetic to the previous layout. Icons helped to introduce readers to content areas, along with colours, taken from the logo, applied to list items and dividers.
Design library and dark mode
Accessibility is always high on my list of important design considerations, in 2019 the prefers-color-scheme CSS property was rolled out, with support from Apple Mail, and partial support from a number of web and mobile apps. Designing for dark mode soon became a task I would undertake for every project, and a topic I would write and speak about in my thought leadership work.
Figma is my (current) favourite tool for designing email compositions, using this software I have created an extensive email design system, containing templates, modules and elements that can be easily iterated upon and updated globally. For this project I was able to leverage modules and design rules within the design system, giving me a leaping off point and a way to make this standalone digest still feel like a part of the Litmus family.
Evaluating success and iteration
To measure the success of this email re-brand we looked at the read and click to open (CTOR) rates. The average read rate prior to the re-design was 51%, this increased to 58% within the first few weeks. Initially we saw a drop in CTOR, however this improved after the first few sends, and the average of 17% that we had seen with the old design increased to 20%.
Initially this email was compiled by the same writer each week, however with so many Litmus employees passionate about email, the team realised that having a different host each week would be an engaging and valuable experience for readers. This alteration took me back to Figma and the design library to add modules that could contain host information and elevate the personality of the writer.
Seasonal fun
To shake things up a little, holidays and popular dates in the calendar have influenced some bespoke asset creation. Halloween and winter holidays have seen the logo get a seasonal update, and on April Fools we thought it would be nice to take the audience back to the 90's–with design styles anyone surfing the web in the early days will recall–a unique design challenge I was happy to accept (Fancy a trip back to 1997?).
