Re: Image Based Emails – Your brand font is dead

TLDR; Stop using images of text – use live text instead – people use browser extensions to adjust the text on their page and that can’t work with images of text!

A few weeks ago I posted my reasons for not using image-based emails in your campaigns and this week I stumbled upon a perfect example of why this is such a problem.

Your brand font is dead!!

Stop trying to force your branded fonts on people by using text in your images. It’s a total waste and makes reading your text harder for people that want to read it using a font that works better for them.

When you use images of text – you are locking them out of that content. You are making your text an exclusive club that only non-disabled people can read. (That’s called ableism)

Let me explain this with a short story.

One of my kids has discovered that reading using a dyslexia-friendly font is really helpful for them. They also like watching Grey’s Anatomy with their partner – and they do that Gen Z thing where they split screen and watch each other watch the show together. (I am squarely an elder millennial so I don’t get it at all, but that’s besides the point). As I walked past their room, I noticed that they had captions running on their netflix – another Gen Z thing – and those captions were using a dyslexia-friendly font!

Look – at this point you should know that I love finding new assistive technologies so I barged in and ruined a nice netflix session and pestered her with questions about this dyslexia-friendly font extension which of course included the question, “Does it work in your gmail??” The answer was yes so I went ahead and got the Mobile Dyslexic extension for firefox myself and ran a few tests.

Note: It’s worth mentioning that I wasn’t able to duplicate this experience in gmail on google chrome – the external email client text converted, but the email text itself did not. I have a lot of theories about this, but not pursuing testing that out yet – so if you want to recreate, use firefox.

This firefox extension will adjust your live text to a dyslexia-friendly font

People that want to read the content of your email should be able to adjust the typeface to suit their reading needs – not forced to use your brand’s font.

And think about this a bit – do you really want to force someone to laboriously read through your text just because… you think it looks nice? So your vanity is more important than someone else’s ability to read your content?? That’s just… kinda weird.

So – I sent myself a few test emails from reallygoodemails.com.

When I look at these examples – honestly – when you see the images of text next to the live text in the dyslexia-friendly font… it looks really bad. When you add to that the idea that you’re making it harder for someone to read that content in the image?? Well – it just doesn’t make sense.

Here are a few examples:

Apple email:

Do I think the guys at apple would like seeing this? No – they’re probably clutching their clean, sans-serif pearls – BUT you can’t deny that for users that want to learn more about these airpods – that happen to be dyslexic – this is a much better experience! And even though some of this email did have images of text – it looks much more uniform when most of the content is using the same font. It looks intentional rather than chaotic.
Primary Kids Clothes:

I thought this one was a good example of using images of text for pure branding reasons and because this quirky font is hard to read for me – and something that someone with dyslexia would probably really appreciate being able to read effectively. The promo code is live text, so that’s good I guess?? There’s no reason at all why this couldn’t be live text.
Venmo:

Venmo’s font here has a lot of personality – and I can understand why they wanted to force that text into imagery… but… it looks super weird when you’re mixing the dyslexia-friendly font with the quirky venmo font. There’s no good reason why these headings and other body text couldn’t just be live text!! (Let those rounded corners go in outlook – it’s okay!!)

Reminder: Even though this might look weird to you if you’re used to the pristine brand-focused font usage, it’s important to note that this isn’t a preference – this is an accessibility aid – an assistive technology that meets the needs of people with reading disabilities. The visual needs to take a back seat to communication.

And there are loads of these extensions:

And these are just the ones I could easily search for – obviously I have not tested all of these on email, lol.

Choosing to use live text so that people can adjust the text to what best suits them isn’t about you – or your brand. Your experiences and preferences should not interfere with someone else’s ability to access your content.

When you choose to force your brand font by using images of text instead of live text – you are barring users with disabilities from your content.

Once upon a time ago we email marketers would dismiss personal settings, extensions, etc as they aren’t things we can replicate or adjust on our side.

This is an old way of thinking. We really need to do the opposite – NOT lock down our email designs so that the users can interact with them however they need to.

Communication > Design