Normally an email is just text.  You can add attachments to an email, and you can insert pictures, but how would you send an email that has pictures, a background, and text mixed and laid out nicely like this:

There are a couple of solutions.

Solution 1. Make and send a pdf.

Pdf stands for ‘portable document format’ and in a pdf file all the fonts, images and text are included in the pdf itself so that whatever computer you view it on, it looks the same.  So a very simple way to make a formatted email that looks nice and that anyone can read is to make a pdf and send the pdf.

Advantage: it looks great and ou know exactly what it will look like to the other person.

Disadvantage: the user can’t copy text out of the email, search for the email at a later date using a phrase from within the email, or edit your message.

How to do it:

1. Create your email in Keynote. (Keynote is an application available form the App store.)  You can include any fonts, any images from iphoto, you can put frames, boxes, backgrounds etc. You can set a custom size you want your slide to be in the inspector. (720×1000 gives a good size for an email.)

2. When you are finished choose ‘File’ and ‘Print’. In the bottom left select ‘pdf’ then ‘mail pdf’. Your pdf version of keynote will appear in mail!

3. Press ‘send’!  This will send what you made in keynote. It sends as a pdf (so people on the other end don’t need keynote to see it) and it will be readable on a mac or PC.

Hint: To make it easier for the person to reply you may wish to include some text after the pdf in the email that summarises the email. You could even copy the text from keynote and paste it in the email after the pdf.

(1) Solution 2. Create a html email.

The more traditional way to do this is to do it via html. It’s a bit tricky though. Perhaps the simplest way on a Mac is to create a single webpage in iWeb (another App), publish it, then insert it into an email.  To do this you:

(1) Create a site in iweb which will be your email.

(2) Publish the site.

(3) Open the site in Safari.

(4) In the Safari in the ‘file’ menu click ‘share’ then ’email this page’. The page will be inserted into your email.

You need to keep the webpage published, because the images are not included in the email, only a link to the pictures is included. You can ‘publish’ to a  folder on your computer instead of the web but the pictures will not work unless they are from the web.  This solution is out of reach of most people, so I’d suggest solution 1 – make a pdf!