Answer: It's hard to give up the dream of email messages that look as realistic as your print ads, but it's more important that the reader get the gist of your message, even if it gets conveyed in text.

However, that doesn't mean you have to resort to 1990s-looking plain-text messages. You want your image to "degrade gracefully," so that one message can serve both image-viewers and image-blockers with style and impact.

1. Start your email design with the full image. After all, on average about a third of your readers will download images on receipt, so you want to give them something to look at.

2. Now, slice the message into pieces. Move images to the background. Then, format the text to display as HTML and move it to the foreground, so that it will display even when images are blocked.

3. You can describe blocked images with alt text. In most email clients, the text shows when the image is blocked and disappears when the image downloads – but use it sparingly. Too much alt text looks cluttered and diminishes the overall impact.

Remember that images should always support copy, rather than replace it.

For more tips, see "Designing Emails for the Preview Pane and Disabled Images"

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