Dark mode is basically the Upside Down of email design.
Everything looks familiar at first. There’s your logo, and your button, and that hero image everyone approved after 37 Slack threads and one tiny emotional breakdown. But it's different because the colors are mutated and your CTA looks like it’s communicating with Christmas lights.
Dark mode can be a mystery, but dark mode isn’t just a coding problem. It’s a design problem. Which means the best time to think about it is not 11 minutes before send, when someone discovers the logo has been swallowed by the void and the rest of the email looks weird.
Because there isn’t one dark mode. There are several. A whole little Hawkins lab of dark modes in various inboxes and devices, each conducting its own deeply unnecessary experiment on your brand colors.
So this week, we’re heading into the email Upside Down to talk about how to design for dark mode before your beautifully crafted campaign starts floating near the ceiling while Kate Bush plays softly in the distance.
