A Rounded Headshot That Works in Every Email Client
Every signature layout with a photograph now offers a circular crop as well as a square one. It sounds like a checkbox. It took considerably longer than a checkbox.
Why round is hard in email
On a web page you round a corner with one line of stylesheet. In email that line is stripped by several major clients, most notably desktop Outlook, which renders through a word processing engine rather than a browser engine.
The result of the naive approach is a signature that is round in Gmail and Apple Mail, and square in Outlook, which is worse than square everywhere because it means you have no idea what your own signature looks like to the person reading it.
How it is done here
The circle is baked into the image itself before it is sent, at the correct size, with the corners rendered against the background the layout uses. No stylesheet is involved, so nothing can strip it. It is round in every client because it is round in the file.
The trade-off is that the image is tied to a background color, which is why changing your signature's background regenerates the photograph rather than just recoloring the panel.
When to use it
Round reads as friendly and slightly informal. Square reads as professional and slightly more distant. Neither is better, and the honest guidance is to match the rest of your presence: if your website and your social profiles use a square crop, a round signature photograph will look like it came from somewhere else.
Consistency across everything is the argument in brand identity, and it applies to something this small.
Crop for the size
A signature photograph is displayed at around 90 pixels. A three-quarter body shot is a smudge at that size. Crop tight: forehead to chin, filling the frame. The same headshot that works on your photos page at full size usually needs a tighter crop here.
Related
More treatments in photo overlays and shapes. Layout options are covered across Ruled Contact and Ruled Classic, Grid Cells and Accent Bar and the final two.
Create your free actor website and your headshot flows straight into the signature.
