Premium Newsletter Design

AllSides | February–April 2023

Content Design

Graphic Design

OVERVIEW

Key stakeholders at a political news media website wanted to launch a newsletter for digital media subscribers that provided unique value and validated the decision to stay subscribed by highlighted the site's best content.

As a content designer, I was tasked with designing a Mailchimp template for the news team to structure the newsletter. I created a mockup in Mailchimp and worked with our managing editor to test it with other AllSides employees.
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As of February 2025, the Balanced Digest newsletter is still sent weekly by the AllSides news team.

A DIGESTIBLE NEWSLETTER FORMAT

FIRST ITERATION

Key elements included a prominent header and designated content blocks for recurring or interchangeable topics.

‍Options for content blocks included gray content blocks and red-blue gradient content divider lines, designed to match the company website's established color scheme; I felt it was important to stay consistent with established design patterns, while offering a fresh layout not seen in other (free) content.

I also followed established industry trends, such as dual section/topic headlines for each content block, to meet users' pre-existing expectations for rotating stories within recurring sections. I presented my initial mockups to the key stakeholder. With their feedback, I narrowed the designs to a single template.

I designed branding for the newsletter to signal uniqueness and attachment to AllSides' broader visual style.

This concept included a "featured story" to focus readers' attention, using copy our writers had already written.

I also included a "top stories" list to give readers a quick overview of content they could read.

TRIMMING IT BACK

TESTING & FEEDBACK

To understand how users might perceive the new format, I asked internal members of the company with different backgrounds to review a sample newsletter.

Overall, feedback was positive, but I'm usually more interested in critiques. Here, I particularly noted feedback on the amount of text vs imagery for skim-ability.

Since feedback came in the form of somewhat aimless Slack messages, I had to pick out particular phrases that spoke to our goals.

We had four respondents, and each gave extensive, thoughtful feedback.

REFLECTIONS

After getting feedback on my first iteration, I worked with the key stakeholder to refine the design to a point that was sufficient for launch. Some adjustments were made as the newsletter team got into the rhythm of publishing each week.

I learned to be more mindful of the attentional weight each line of text places on the reader. Coming from a social science background, my instinct is often to write as much as it takes to accurately convey my ideas. That instinct is ill-suited if I'm trying to design concise skimmable content.