Signature Best Practices

Signatures must sometimes satisfy conflicting design goals. The best-looking signature on mails sometimes causes problems in long reply chains. Understanding the issues that signature designs can cause will help you design signatures that best meet your needs.  

This page will help you when creating your design. Rocketseed signatures strive to keep your brand look & feel in tact across all major platforms which means your signature will look great on every send!

Please also bear in mind that your signature is only one part of your overall branding and should work with your entire email layout.

What to bear in mind when designing your signature

In the design process, you need to be aware of the following:

• Signatures are built in a table format to ensure the layout remains correct across platforms.

• Try to have no more than two columns in the design.  This is to avoid too much text wrapping on mobiles and devices with a smaller display window.

• Try to avoid using image icons for your phone/mobile etc. numbers.  Using text such as "T" or "M" in the layout allows the label to be removed if the user has no data in the database.  This means that the master signature will be able to be used for your entire organisation without the need for different versions of the signature.

• As addresses can be very long, always try and design the layout so they have a row of their own that can populate the entire width of the design.  Also be aware that the address will wrap when the design is viewed on mobile devices.

• Do not use images that may display copy in them for things that need to change per person. Always design user specific details as text so that these personalised details can be picked from the database on a per person basis.

• To ensure all text displays correctly, we recommend using only websafe fonts in your email signature.  If you do wish to use a different font, always ensure that there is a websafe font specified as the secondary font.  Also please bear in mind that if you are not using a websafe font, the design look and feel will alter when viewed in the alternate websafe font.

• Background colours are rarely a good idea.  Dark Mode changes all colours, background colours included.  The colour displayed changes from device to device and also from app to app on the same device.

• Images should always have a transparent background as this renders better in Dark Mode.

• By default images are set to strip in an email chain, if you have a left aligned image this leaves a small indent in previous email chains where the image is stripped, however the most recent template will be correct when showing the full image.

Other general things to consider

• In email design, the signature space is seen as less 'intrusive'.  This is so that the eye is taken to the banner designs and messaging, images should therefore be used sparingly in the signature space.

• Once they have been approved for use, signatures designs do not tend to change, however banner elements can and should be updated regularly.

• Animation is supported by Rocketseed but not by all email clients.  This means that an animated gif won’t work for all email recipients, some will only see the first frame of the gif as a static image.

• Images over the size of 15kb show as attachments (as well as inside the email) in Google inboxes so try to keep images in the signature below this size if possible.

• Remember that banners operate separately to signatures. A signature should be seen as only one part of an email design.  The signature works with a banner and disclaimer element.  If you are using a banner that is placed at the bottom of the mail, please remember that this banner will always sit below the signature design.