One column is not a limitation

Designers coming to email from the web tend to describe it as a downgrade. No flexbox you can trust, no web fonts in Outlook, no JavaScript, a viewport that might be 320px or might be a preview pane four inches wide. Tables. In 2026.

I think this framing is wrong, and I think it produces bad email.

There is exactly one real constraint: one column, unknown width. Everything else on that list is a detail of how you satisfy it. And a single column of unknown width is not a poor version of a web page. It is a different medium with a long and rather good history, which is the medium of the printed letter.

What the constraint gives you

It removes the layout question. You cannot put a sidebar next to the text, so you will not spend two days deciding whether to. Every decision left is about the words and their rhythm, which is where the decisions should have been.

It forces sequence. In one column there is no “over there” — only “before” and “after”. That is a stronger organising principle than most web layouts manage, and readers follow it without instruction.

It is legible by default. Cap the column at about 560 pixels and you land on a measure of 60-75 characters, which is where typographers have landed for four hundred years. You get that for free.

The four moves worth having

Once you accept the column, the whole design vocabulary is small enough to list.

Measure. 520 to 600 pixels. Narrower reads as cramped on desktop; wider breaks the line length on any screen over 700.

Rhythm. One vertical spacing unit, used consistently. Paragraph gap of 1, heading gap of 2 above and 1 below, section break of 3. That is the whole spacing system and it will look considered.

One rule, used once. A single horizontal line, above the sign-off. It marks the end of the reading. Use two and it becomes decoration; use none and the ending is soft.

One photograph, in the middle. Never at the top — an image above the first paragraph is the single strongest “this is marketing” signal there is. In the middle it works as a breath.

Everything you want that the column will not give you, the archive page can. Stop fighting the email for layout it cannot do and put it on the web, where it is free.

The split that makes this easy

This is the part people miss. You do not have to choose.

The email is the letter: one column, restrained, made to survive an unknown client. The web version of the same issue can do whatever you want — a wide cover, a proper grid of related issues, a topic index, a search box. They are the same content with different jobs, and treating them as one design problem is what produces an email full of things that do not work and a web page that looks like an email.

Design the letter for the inbox. Design the archive for the browser. The writing is the only thing that has to be identical.

Next issue: Sam on the forty percent of your list who are not reading any of this.