# McWilliams|Ballard — 30th Anniversary Invitation (email build)

Built from `FNL_MB_30TH_INVITE_09.14.26.pdf` / `.indd` (InDesign 21.6). The source is a
single 750 × 1320 poster. This build rewrites it as a live-text HTML email so it survives
spam filtering and images-off inboxes.

## Files

```
mb-30th-invite.html   The email
mb-30th-invite.txt    Plain-text alternative — load into your ESP's text part
images/
  hero-chair.jpg          1200 × 1344 (displays 600 × 672) — 63 KB
  mark-30.png             310 × 270 (displays 155 × 135) — 25 KB
  logo-mb-white.png       232 × 69 (displays 116 × 34) — 9 KB
  logo-eho-white.png      44 × 34 (displays 22 × 17) — 1 KB
```

Total image weight: **98 KB across four files.** The original poster as a single JPEG
would have been the entire message.

## What the rebuild actually changes

The poster has no text at all as far as a mail filter is concerned — it's one picture.
Two consequences, and both are what you asked about:

**Spam scoring.** Image-only email is one of the oldest spam patterns there is, because
it's how you hide text from a content filter. Every major filter scores low text-to-image
ratio, and a message with zero extractable text has nothing else to be judged on.

**Images off.** Outlook desktop blocks external images by default, as do most corporate
gateways and Gmail when set to "ask before displaying." Those recipients would have
opened a blank dark rectangle — no date, no venue, no link.

Here every word is live HTML text. Four images remain and none of them carries
information that exists nowhere else. The date, venue, address, CTA and the boarding-pass
strip are all real text. The strip in particular looks like artwork but costs nothing in
image weight.

The reason it holds together with images off is that the chair photograph is itself
near-black. The fallback color (`#231F20`) is within a few percent of the photo it
replaces, so the invitation reads as a deliberately minimal dark card rather than a
broken one.

## The hero

The chair is a bulletproof background image: CSS `background-image` for most clients, a
VML `<v:rect>` for Outlook desktop, and `bgcolor="#231F20"` underneath both. The hero cell
is a fixed 672px tall so the VML rect matches the CSS box exactly — if you change the
content inside it, change the VML `height` to match or Outlook will stretch the photo.

On mobile the hero drops to `background-size:100% auto` so the photo scales with the
container instead of having its arms cropped off.

Alt text is styled, not left to the client. Sizes were chosen so each alt string *fits
inside its image's declared box* — alt text that overflows gets clipped, which is how most
images-off emails end up with half a word floating in the dark. With images blocked the
wordmark falls back to "McWilliams / Ballard" on two lines, and the 30 logotype falls back
to a 54px silver "30" sitting directly above the live "YEARS AT ALTITUDE".

## Before you send

- [ ] **Absolute image URLs.** Replace every `images/...` with a full `https://` URL on
      your own domain. The VML background will not load a relative path — Outlook desktop
      would fall back to flat black.
- [ ] **The RSVP URL.** Button and hero link both point at `https://www.mcwb.com/30`.
      Replace with the real registration page. Do not use a link shortener; shorteners are
      one of the strongest spam signals in an otherwise clean email.
- [ ] **The postal address.** The footer address is a placeholder. CAN-SPAM requires a real
      physical mailing address and its absence is scored by most filters.
- [ ] **Merge tags.** `*|UNSUB|*`, `*|UPDATE_PROFILE|*`, `*|ARCHIVE|*` — swap for your
      platform's equivalents. You didn't name an ESP, so these are Mailchimp-style
      placeholders; find-and-replace is all it takes.
- [ ] **Send multipart.** Load `mb-30th-invite.txt` into the text part. Sending
      `multipart/alternative` rather than HTML-only is worth real inbox placement.
- [ ] **Pick a subject line** from the four at the top of the HTML. They avoid all-caps,
      exclamation marks and currency symbols, all of which are scored.
- [ ] **Seed-test before the real send** — Litmus, Email on Acid or a handful of live
      accounts, checking Outlook desktop and Gmail with images off specifically.

## What this file can't fix

Deliverability is mostly a sending-side property. The HTML gets you a clean content score;
it cannot help with:

- SPF, DKIM and DMARC alignment on the sending domain
- List hygiene, bounce rate and complaint rate
- Domain and IP sending reputation, and warm-up if this is a new sending domain
- The from-name / from-address pair, and whether recipients recognise it

If this is going to a cold or stale list, no amount of HTML will carry it. If the list is
warm and authenticated, this build should land.

## Typography note

The poster is set in Paralucent Text (Book and Bold), confirmed in the InDesign file.
Email can't depend on it, so the stack falls back to Helvetica/Arial and the letter-spacing
values were tuned per line so each tracked line lands within a few pixels of the printed
width. Outlook 2016+ honours `letter-spacing`; older builds render slightly tighter, which
is harmless.

The InDesign file also confirmed the source art: `first-class-seat-ad-black-wide.png` and
`MB_Logo_WHT.png`. The assets here were extracted from the PDF's vector and image layers at
high resolution and are equivalent — but if you want the originals swapped in, the slots
are marked `► IMAGE n of 4` in the HTML.