To celebrate the upcoming festive period we thought we'd resurrect our monthly design wrap up, we know Christmas has come early! Here are a few of our favourites from October.

1. Penguin Books Chosen for: Beautiful visuals.

Clean layout pulling in some seasonality without screaming Christmas.

Content is spaced out cleanly which is pleasing on the eye.

Content grouping.

They pull out small summary of each book giving you a taster and group the books together in a creative way.

Social linkage.

In addition to posting social icons Penguin go one further and cross promote a relevant Facebook event to inspire their readers.

2. Costa Coffee SL: Free coffee. Without the wait. Chosen for: Clean design / Simple message .

They convey the campaign objective really well.

Animation doesn't distract from they key message but helps it to tell the story with great iconography supplementing laying out just how simple it is.

Content.

The content of this email is really on point, no throwing copy or additional messages in for the sake of it.

I love the headline, it tells me what the message contains within 4 words, no mean feat! 3.

B&Q Chosen for: Content hierarchy.

B&Q used Octobers half term wisely to create a great email pushing DIY jobs on peoples mind in the run up to Christmas.

Content pulls you down the page and is grouped well for this clear message.

Loyalty Scheme Tie In.

They pull in their membership scheme within the secondary content leveraging personalised barcodes and good value messaging to tie the on/offline experience seamlessly.

4. Oliver Bonas SL: Bright sparks Chosen for: Subtle animation.

Gifs don’t always have to be loud and in your face this is a nice way of introducing action within email to add depth.

Content Curation.

The way Oliver Bonas theme and curate their email content is seamless, the content aligns nicely and pulls your eye down the page.

5. Etsy SL: Introducing: The Christmas Helper Chosen for: Great storytelling.

This sequence of emails is sent weekly to help make Christmas a breeze, each is themed around different subjects like decorations, gifting, hosting etc.

Given customers inboxes are overflowing at this time of year they stand out by not screaming and let their products do the selling.

Illustrative style.

The illustrations in the header with minimal animation give this email personality.

Any you've loved that we've missed? Let us know on Instagram or Twitter .

Bex Highfield Marketing Manager