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Useful Web Design E-Mail Newsletters

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There are thousands of good websites out there offering web design and development tips. It’s a bit much to sift through in most cases. There must be an easier way. Enter the email newsletter. What could be better than sitting back and waiting for the newest design and development news to be delivered to your inbox? Here is a rather short list of great newsletters devoted to web development, design, and related topics.

You may be interested in the following useful posts:

[Offtopic: by the way, did you know that Smashing Magazine has one of the most influential and popular Twitter accounts? Join our discussions and get updates about useful tools and resources — follow us on Twitter!]

BlueVertigo Newsletter

BlueVertigo regularly updates its list of resources related to design and web-development and informs its subscribers about recent updats and new resources. Always a very good source of new useful resources for web developer’s toolbox.

Bluevertigo in Useful Web Design E-Mail Newsletters

Laura Carlson’s Web Design Update Newsletter

Laura Carlson’s legendary Web Design Update newsletter sends news, information and tutorials about web design and development. The Web Design Update is a plain text email digest dedicated to disseminating news and information about web design and development with emphasis on elements of user experience, accessibility, web standards and more. Whenever new articles are linked on the Web Design Reference site, a Web Design Update newsletter message is sent to the listserv. The newsletter is sent out weekly.

Laura in Useful Web Design E-Mail Newsletters

Ben Hunt’s Web Design Newsletter

If you’ve never heard of Web Design From Scratch, you’re really missing out. Even if you’ve heard of it, did you know they had a newsletter? Ben Hunt’s Web Design Newsletter offers up great monthly web design information and tips. The July 2009 issue offered up some great info on white on white web design, Google Website Optimizer, semantic CSS, and a link to a free ebook.

Benhuntswebdesignnewsletter in Useful Web Design E-Mail Newsletters

Web Smart Newsletter

Web Smart newsletters are written for advertising agencies to keep them in the loop on what’s happening on the Web. These newsletters are never technical or buzz-word enriched; instead they cover online trends that impact marketing such as: web technologies, search optimization and marketing, website applications, design issues, new media, and online advertising.

Newf in Useful Web Design E-Mail Newsletters

.Net Magazine’s Newsletter

.Net Magazine is one of the most popular web design magazines out there. While the magazine is paid, they offer a free email newsletter. It offers up content similar to that found in the magazine and on their website, covering all aspects of web design news.

Netmagazine in Useful Web Design E-Mail Newsletters

Bokardo

Bokardo Design is a social web design company that offers a newsletter. They cover social design issues including influence, reputation, community, behavior and their relationship with different aspects of design. You can view their full archives on their website, along with signing up via email or RSS.

Bokardo in Useful Web Design E-Mail Newsletters

SitePoint Newsletters

SitePoint offers up four newsletters, each cover a different aspect of web design and development.

Tribune

The Tribune is a weekly newsletter that offers general web design news, with a heavy focus on the business of web design. Their archives are all available online, with each issue focusing on a different theme based on the main article (like #456: “Keep that Job!” or #448: “Nifty Gadgets for Your Consideration”).

Sitepointtribune in Useful Web Design E-Mail Newsletters

Tech Times

The Tech Times is a biweekly newsletter that offers much more technical articles than the others, focused on topics like CSS, HTML, jQuery, PHP, and other programming languages. Their newsletters are all available online, each with a different theme centered around their main article (like #228: “What’s So Bad About CSS Frameworks?” and #229: “More Crimes Against Hypertext”).

Sitepointtechtimes in Useful Web Design E-Mail Newsletters

Community Crier

The Community Crier offers information from SitePoint’s community forums and community.

Sitepointcommunitycrier in Useful Web Design E-Mail Newsletters

SitePoint Design View

Design View is a monthly newsletter that offers design news, tools, and tips for web design. They focus on providing useful information to web designers, but for the most part it’s less technical than the “Tech Times” mentioned above. Issues are themed based on the lead article (like #52: “Coda, CS4, & New Photoshop Tricks” or #48: “HTML Email and the Legion of Doom”).

Sitepointdesignview in Useful Web Design E-Mail Newsletters

AskTog

AskTog is a newsletter focused on interaction design solutions from the Nielsen Norman Group. They cover topics like inclusive design for people with disabilities and technology comparisons (the most recent was comparing the first generation Kindle with the iPhone/iPod Touch). There newsletters don’t appear every month, but they do make their archives available online.

Asktog in Useful Web Design E-Mail Newsletters

Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox

Alertbox is Jakob Nielsen’s regular, biweekly column on web usability topics. He’s been writing it since 1995, and all of the archives are available online. Recent topics have included Mobile Usability, Social Networking on Intranets, and Respect for Usability. It’s a must-have resource for web designers and developers alike.

Alertbox in Useful Web Design E-Mail Newsletters

SiteProNews

SiteProNews offers email updates about new content. They cover a wide variety of web design, marketing, and SEO topics. Their articles are all available directly on their website, as well.

Sitepronews in Useful Web Design E-Mail Newsletters

Boston Interactive’s Newsletter

Boston Interactive offers a free newsletter that covers a variety of web design and development topics. Recent topics they’ve covered include articles about Bing, Twitter, and crowdsourcing. Their archives are available online.

Bostoninteractive in Useful Web Design E-Mail Newsletters

Bonus: Designer In Action’s Newsletter (German)

This newsletter is in German but covers a variety of web design topics. The weekly newsletter sends out useful tools, resources and links to freebies. Previous articles have covered iPhone apps for designers, fonts, and upcoming events.

Designerinaction in Useful Web Design E-Mail Newsletters

Further Resources

Use the tools below to create your own email newsletter.

Related posts

You may be interested in the following useful posts:

Small-book in Useful Web Design E-Mail Newsletters

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Cameron Chapman

Cameron Chapman is a professional Web and graphic designer with over 6 years of experience. She writes for a number of blogs, including her own, Cameron Chapman On Writing. She’s also the author of Internet Famous: A Practical Guide to Becoming an Online Celebrity.

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  1. 1
    sayan mukherjee
    August 12th, 2009 10:42 am

    thanks for sharing…love this.

    Reply
  2. 2
    Roy Vergara
    August 12th, 2009 10:45 am

    gomediazine.com is a good one too

    Reply
  3. 3
    Jourdan
    August 12th, 2009 10:57 am

    Thank you for the information! Very helpful!

    Reply
  4. 4
    kibal4iw
    August 12th, 2009 11:08 am

    Thank you. Very interesting. Please note

    Reply
  5. 5
    Bim
    August 12th, 2009 11:13 am

    I don’t tend to receive email newsletters anymore.. just follow rss feeds. Anyway might be good to show examples of beauitiful email newsletters rather than where to get information about web design and development news which we can pick up from news blogs anyway. Just my opinion… Thanks for writing.

    Reply
  6. 6
    Jai
    August 12th, 2009 11:17 am

    I wonder how the Smashing Magazine email newsletter will look? :-D

    Reply
  7. 7
    Mike
    August 12th, 2009 11:27 am

    I wonder how some of the more advanced email newsletters look in some email clients. I’ve personally had a difficult time creating more than a basic layout and having it work in the majority of email clients.

    Reply
  8. 8
    Brandon Jones
    August 12th, 2009 11:45 am

    Any chance of an article detailing resources for making our own html newsletters?

    Reply
  9. 9
    MS
    August 12th, 2009 11:50 am

    I agree with #8 Brandon Jones – an article about creating HTML newsletters would be great.

    Reply
  10. 10
    Matt Mickiewicz
    August 12th, 2009 12:03 pm

    Thanks for including SitePoint’s four email newsletters!

    Great list.

    Reply
  11. 11
    Josh Tummel
    August 12th, 2009 12:45 pm

    I agree with Mike above. No idea how you can achieve a good looking newsletter without basically making the whole thing an image. Since CSS can’t be used, and only really dumbed down HTML works, it’s pretty much impossible to make a complicated structure.
    A newsletter design guide would be a huge plus.

    Reply
  12. 12
    tx8
    August 12th, 2009 12:56 pm

    Neh nobody read newsletter anymore.

    Reply
  13. 13
    Chris Butler
    August 12th, 2009 12:57 pm

    Thanks for including Newfangled’s WebSmart newsletter in the list! The company’s founder, Eric Holter, began writing them monthly in 2001 until I took over in 2008. Our goal has always been to write primarily to our audience of creative agencies, with whom we partner to build “better websites for their clients.”

    Above, @Mike asked about how the newsletters look in different email clients. This has been something we’ve found to be especially tricky. We use our own newsletter component that is tied directly in to our site’s content management system, a tool we also offer to our clients, so we’ve had a lot of experience with the development side of newsletter campaign software. Even so, we’ve never been able to guarantee that the template appears *exactly* how it’s intended in every webmail, mobile or desktop email client. There are just too many out there! We do try to ensure performance in the major clients, like Outlook, MacMail, Gmail, etc.

    - Chris Butler, Vice President, Newfangled

    Reply
  14. 14
    Bob
    August 12th, 2009 1:05 pm

    Don’t forget my article on Nettuts.com

    6 Easy Ways To Improve Your HTML Emails

    Reply
  15. 15
    fall3n
    August 12th, 2009 1:32 pm

    For those of you looking for good HTML newsletter resources, Campaign Monitor always has great guides and information. Here’s one e-mail design guideline article. http://www.campaignmonitor.com/design-guidelines/

    Also, their list of e-mail clients and their supported CSS is an excellent piece of reference material. http://www.campaignmonitor.com/css/

    Reply
  16. 16
    fall3n
    August 12th, 2009 1:33 pm

    ^^ And no I don’t work for them, I just have a number of years of experience with HTML newsletters :)

    Reply
  17. 17
    Jakob Nielsen
    August 12th, 2009 3:04 pm

    Thank you for including the Alertbox newsletter. I have actually written several newsletters about newsletters (circular, I know), based on our usability testing of 228 different email newsletters:

    Email Newsletters: Surviving Inbox Congestion

    Targeted Email Newsletters Show Continued Strength

    Email Newsletters Pick Up Where Websites Leave Off

    Case studies from 2004: Bush vs. Kerry: Email Newsletters Rated and Newsletter Usability: Can a Professional Publisher Do Better?

    Reply
  18. 18
    Anrkist
    August 12th, 2009 3:29 pm

    #8 Mike – Stick to the basics for email. Campaign Monitor has a pretty slick articles and tips section.

    Reply
  19. 19
    Connor Katz
    August 12th, 2009 3:35 pm

    This is a nice list, but with RSS and now with Twitter, does anyone really subscribe to newsletters anymore?

    Reply
  20. 20
    ronihind
    August 12th, 2009 4:35 pm

    HA! no.6 – nice one

    Reply
  21. 21
    alanc
    August 12th, 2009 4:51 pm

    Very generous of you to promote the competition!

    I’m old school enough that I prefer to receive periodic messages in my Inbox, rather than having to keep my eye on a series of RSS feeds.

    The one thing that Smashing Magazine has always glaringly lacked is an email digest

    Reply
  22. 22
    Blue Vertigo
    August 12th, 2009 5:18 pm

    Cameron, thnaks for your support! :)

    Reply
  23. 23
    yoxx
    August 12th, 2009 9:22 pm

    thanks for sharing…

    Reply
  24. 24
    Luis Lopez
    August 12th, 2009 11:03 pm

    The .Net magazines newsletter is my favorite is the best design of the list, I found some newsletter really ugly sometimes, why client don’t invest on this kind of marketing if it could be really effective.

    Reply
  25. 25
    All for Design
    August 13th, 2009 12:34 am

    Very useful, thanks :)

    Reply
  26. 26
    tom
    August 13th, 2009 3:56 am

    Wonderful list, thank you!

    Reply
  27. 27
    Niall McKenna
    August 13th, 2009 5:25 am

    slightly off topic but would any of smashing’s writers be able to compile an article on effective HTML Email design and development.

    I would love to see an article of this nature. cheers as always!

    Reply
  28. 28
    Victoria
    August 13th, 2009 5:57 am

    Cameron,

    Thank you so much for including Boston Interactive’s newsletter in this list! We are truly honored. We’ve been sending out our monthly newsletter for years and are big believers in the medium. Keep an eye out for the next newsletter – launching at the end of the month – as we will be announcing some big news and a fresh new design!

    Reply
  29. 29
    Sean McCambridge
    August 13th, 2009 7:20 am

    Yeah, I thought it would be nice to get some tips on writing those dreaded HTML emails. That’s what I was expecting to find here. Ah, well.

    Reply
  30. 30
    AS
    August 13th, 2009 8:21 am

    i always thought photojojo was a fantastic newsletter.

    Reply
  31. 31
    Cassie
    August 13th, 2009 11:21 am

    Keep in mind that not every designer designs for a tech-savvy audience. I’d bet the majority don’t. I design HTML newsletters for an older customer base, and I guarantee you (based on subscribes–or lack thereof) that they do not use RSS! On the other hand, I have a pretty high open rate on the emails we send out to 30,000 subscribers each month. Use the best tool for your audience, not just the tool YOU like the best.

    Thanks for the list, I needed something fresh in my inbox!

    Reply
  32. 32
    matt
    August 13th, 2009 1:43 pm

    How can you trust a newsletter on design when the design of the newsletter itself is so basic?

    The idea of having the information constantly pushed to me when I can choose go to view the website articles whenever I want feels like opt-in SPAM. What’s a web browser for?

    Note: Talking of really annoying SPAM – the book subscription corner peel makes it impossible to use the search (on some pages).

    Reply
  33. 33
    Jojje
    August 14th, 2009 12:01 am

    Frankly I think that your collection is somewhat limited. A beautiful example of what you can achieve with basic html is the MyFonts newsletter.

    Reply
  34. 34
    Floris Fiedeldij Dop
    August 14th, 2009 2:56 am

    Great, newsletters are always hard, especially when you are dealing with 250,000+ member communities. Seeing how bigger sites deal with this and what is out there, is really nice. A few more SM Newsletter Articles might help everybody. Excellent coverage

    Reply
  35. 35
    Jessica
    August 14th, 2009 7:49 am

    A lot of those kinda sucked :P IMO

    Campaign Monitor has a fantastic gallery of newsletters I highly recommend checking out. http://www.campaignmonitor.com/gallery/

    Reply
  36. 36
    Christina
    August 15th, 2009 1:13 pm

    Thanks for this, great list! I know most are using RSS feeds but still nice to get a well designed email on the topic we love to entice us to visit their sites and read more.

    I would definitely recommend Ben Hunt’s site Web Design From Scratch!

    Reply
  37. 37
    Carlos
    August 16th, 2009 11:57 pm

    Sitepoints newsletters are completely useless! As already stated campaign monitor are good.

    Reply
  38. 38
    Michiel
    August 17th, 2009 2:46 am

    What would be really helpfull is to know a bit more about email sending engines. I have started developing a site, but how should is send and gather these email adresses. What are good systems on your own site, things to mind when doing it yourself. And what hosted services could i use? Would be great addition to this article!

    Reply
  39. 39
    Sam Granger
    August 17th, 2009 4:01 am

    Sahme you didn’t add Veer.com’s newsletter, I received one recently and it was absolutely beautiful!

    Reply
  40. 40
    Fabiano
    August 17th, 2009 5:23 am

    What could be better than sitting back and waiting for the newest design and development news to be delivered to your inbox?

    RSS.

    Reply
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