••• AMOR BIZARRO
Translating complexity into design that moves people.
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Tiny Blue Dot Foundation: Wellness, Digital Design, Email

Email newsletter digital design
Two newsletters that each push one action

CLIENT

Tiny Blue Dot Foundation

Sector

Science

Role

Digital designer: layout, template system, HTML build

CREATIVE SERVICES

Email newsletter

CHALLENGE

Tiny Blue Dot Foundation operates in a complex scientific space; researching perception, consciousness, and neuroscience, where credibility and clarity are essential. Communicating this work to multiple audiences (research applicants, donors, and collaborators) required a email newsletter that could feel rigorous and trustworthy without becoming overly academic or inaccessible.

Key constraints

  • Email is not the web. These limits were set before any visual decisions, and every module was built to work within them.

OPPORTUNITY

A newsletter template system for a neuroscience foundation, used for two issues. Each one has to explain a hard idea, survive Gmail, Outlook and a 375px phone, and get a busy reader to click one thing.

A clarified email newsletter

  • Each issue is built from the same set of stacked modules.

  • The masthead, primary call to action, brand band and footer never change.

  • Everything in between is picked to fit the content.

OUTCOME

  • A reusable system: 13 modules that make up two issues. Any new issue can be assembled from them without designing from scratch.

  • Five send-ready emails: hand-coded HTML for Mailchimp, built to work in Gmail, Outlook and Apple Mail, on a 375px phone, with images off and in dark mode.

  • One action per issue: each email has a single button label, repeated at the top and bottom. Everything else is a text link.

  • Under Gmail's limit: each issue is about 18–24KB, well under the size where Gmail cuts off the bottom of an email (~100KB).

  • Faster to read: the copy was cut by about half after checking it against newsletter best practices, so each issue can be skimmed in under a minute.

Quotes

  • “Researchers on a deadline will click sooner if the button comes before any image.”

  • “Repeating the exact button label at the close turns late readers into clickers.”

  • “A preheader that adds new information beats one that repeats the subject.”

HANDOFF

  • Delivered 13 modules as send-ready HTML, with a guide to how each module is built and a list of which module suits which kind of content.

  • Each module carries notes on how it behaves on mobile, in Outlook and with images off, so the team can build new issues without me.

REFLECTION

  • Testing changed the template, not just one email. Each winning version became a rule in the system, so later issues benefit automatically. That is the main reason to test a template rather than a single campaign.

  • One change per test made the results trustworthy. It meant more test rounds, but each result clearly showed what caused the difference. That made it easy for the internal team to accept the findings.

  • The audience decided the layout. Researchers wanted dates and buttons, while general readers responded to images. A single hero-first layout would have underperformed with half the list.

  • The handoff mattered as much as the design. Writing down why each module exists, and not only how it is built, kept the system intact after I left.

  • What I'd do differently: agree what counts as a meaningful result before testing, rather than judging after each send. I'd also track unsubscribes per test, not only opens and clicks. And I'd run tests on issue 03 longer, because the parents segment of that list was small.