Keeping email designs simple: four reasons to prioritise live text over images

In email, simplicity and consistency are what make campaigns people engage with. The strongest pattern is emails that feel like a natural extension of your brand's website: clean layouts where content is rendered in code, rather than heavy creative that only works as a flattened image.

Keeping image use in a supporting role is one of the best ways to produce emails quickly at scale — and it matches how Brandblox locks type, colour and buttons into live Blox instead of baked-in artwork.

1. Accessibility: make sure every recipient can read your email

Many recipients experience email through a screen reader. Screen readers read the content in your code. Words embedded in an image are invisible unless you write accurate alt text — and even then the experience is second best.

Live text can be read aloud, resized, translated and adapted for dark mode. That reaches a wider audience, and more people reading your email means more people engaging with it.

• Add role="presentation" to layout tables so screen readers skip structural markup.
• Use proper heading styles for a clear hierarchy.
• Write descriptive alt text for meaningful images; leave alt empty for decorative ones.

2. Deliverability: improve your chances of reaching the inbox

Designing an entire email as one large image looks exactly like the mockup — and it's one of the easiest ways to look like spam. Filters need readable content; an image-only send gives them very little to judge.

Build with live text, supported by images rather than replaced by them, so providers can understand and trust the message. Aim for a healthy text-to-image balance rather than a single hero with a button.

Tip: start with live text and code in a simple layout, then add imagery to support the content — content first.

3. Visibility: live text is always seen

Not every recipient sees images. Many Outlook setups block them by default; some people switch them off; connections fail. When your offer is baked into an image, those people see a blank space.

Live text is always there. It also pays off in production: updating coded copy takes seconds; changing text in an image means redesign, export and re-upload — often per language.

• Never use an image for your call-to-action. Make it a live-code button.
• If text in an image matters (custom typography in a hero), repeat the message in live copy too.

4. Consistency: one brand from inbox to landing page

Every email is part of a bigger digital experience. Side by side, do this year's sends feel like one brand? Do buttons match the website? Live text makes consistency easier because typography, colours and buttons can be defined once — exactly what Brandblox Brands and Emails are for (see how it works).

• Style email buttons to match the website as closely as possible for a seamless journey.
• Keep headers, footers and treatments such as corner radius consistent.
• Use your brand's fonts, sizes and line heights for headings and body so type looks the same across channels.

Keep it simple

Prioritising live text brings four practical wins:

• Accessibility — content reaches more recipients.
• Deliverability — mailbox providers can read and trust the email.
• Visibility — the message lands even when images don't.
• Consistency — emails feel like one brand, from inbox to site.

Make live text and code the foundation, with imagery in support. Pair that with the nine design rules and a shared email design system.