Make a Scalable Newsletter with Fireworks

There’s a preconception among designers that email clients’ lack of support for web standards means you can’t get creative with newsletters. James Parker is out to explode this theory. With customer information databases bulging, and the ability to target people genuinely interested in what they’re selling, it’s no surprise email newsletters have become the marketers’ new weapon of choice. In this tutorial James Parker will use Fireworks to design an email newsletter.

Open up the file Wireframe.png that James Parker has pre-ruled to help get you started. In the properties panel set the canvas colour to #210000 and draw a rectangle 1000px wide and 365px high. Give it a colour of #300000 and position it at the top of the page. Using the Pen tool draw two lines, each 1px thick and 1000px wide. Stack them on top of each other and sit them on the first horizontal guide. Set the top line colour to #000000 and make the bottom line #FFFFFF with 10% opacity. Group the strokes together. The top left corner is generally the first part of the email the receiver will see, so let’s reserve this area for branding. Open the logo file LoveBarista.png, position it 22px from the top and left align it against the 150px vertical guide.