# McWilliams|Ballard — Portal RIS Launch (email build)

Built from `V3_MB_PortalRIS_Launch_Eblast_09.29.26.pdf` (InDesign 21.6). Coordinates were
read out of the 650 × 1500 pt artboard and scaled to a 600px email column, so elements sit
where they were drawn.

## Files

```
mb-portal-ris-launch.html   The email
mb-portal-ris-launch.txt    Plain-text alternative — load into your ESP's text part
images/
  logo-mb-30-white.png    418 × 134 (displays 209 × 67) — the 30th anniversary lockup
  video-placeholder.jpg   984 × 634 (displays 492 × 317) — replace with a real still
  btn-pill.png            554 × 118 (displays 277 × 59) — the chrome plate, text-free
  logo-eho-white.png       52 × 40 (displays 26 × 20)
  play-button.png         320 × 320 — NOT placed; supplied for compositing (see below)
```

Total image weight: about 88 KB.

## A note on which copy shipped

The V3 artboard and the `DRAFT_MB_PortalRIS_agentemailcopy` Word file say different things.
The Word draft had a different headline, three separate videos, longer bullets and
`[Nick/Harrison]` as a placeholder. V3 is tighter: one video, four short bullets, and both
contacts named with real addresses.

**V3 is what's in the HTML.** If the Word draft is actually the approved text, say so and
it can be swapped — but the V3 layout is built around one video, so that would be a
structural change, not a copy edit.

## The frame is not an image

The corner brackets and the two long side hairlines are built from 1px table cells and cell
borders. They cost nothing, and they still draw when images are blocked — which is most of
why the images-off version of this email still looks like the design rather than like a
stack of text.

## Video in email

No mainstream client plays embedded video. Gmail, Outlook and the Yahoo/AOL family all
strip `<video>`. The pattern used here — and it is the universal one — is a poster image
with the play button drawn on it, wrapped in a link to the hosted video. It looks like a
player and behaves like a link.

`images/video-placeholder.jpg` is the placeholder frame lifted straight from the artboard,
so the email is complete today. To swap in the real thing:

1. Export the still at **984 × 634**.
2. Composite `images/play-button.png` onto it at 160 × 160, centred.
3. Replace the file and keep the `width`/`height` attributes as they are.

This is also why the START HERE button sits immediately below and points at the same URL.
If images are blocked the poster disappears, but the button is live text on a background
image with `#C8C9CC` underneath as a solid fallback — so there is always a visible way
through to the video. That was the main thing worth protecting in this layout.

## Two decisions worth reviewing

**The artboard has two left margins.** Everything above the video sits at x=67; everything
from the video down sits at x=54 — a 13px jog. It's reproduced faithfully rather than
silently corrected, in case it's a deliberate editorial indent. To align them, change the
upper-block padding from `33px` to `20px` and the layout closes up.

**The video frame is 1.55:1, not 16:9.** The box drawn in InDesign is 492 × 317, but the
caption inside it reads "16:9 · 1920x1080". A true 16:9 poster at this width is 492 × 277.
Either crop the still to 1.55:1, or say the word and the frame can be retightened.

## Before you send

- [ ] **► VIDEO URL** — the poster and the START HERE button both point at `#VIDEO-URL`
- [ ] **► VIDEO POSTER** — replace the placeholder per the steps above
- [ ] **► ABSOLUTE IMAGE URLS** — replace every `images/...` with a full `https://` URL
- [ ] **► POSTAL ADDRESS** in the footer
- [ ] **► SUBJECT LINE** — four options at the top of the HTML
- [ ] **Send multipart** — load the `.txt` into the text part
- [ ] **Seed-test**, checking Outlook desktop and Gmail with images off specifically

Search the HTML for `►` to find every placeholder.

## Typography

The artboard uses Paralucent Text (Book, Bold, Bold Italic). Email can't depend on it, so
the stack falls back to Helvetica/Arial. Sizes were matched on cap height rather than line
width, because cap height is what reads as "size" when you put the two side by side —
Paralucent's letterforms are wider than Arial's at the same optical size, so headline lines
land a little short of the printed width. The line breaks are hard-coded, so nothing
reflows awkwardly.

Measured against the artboard, every element lands within about 20px vertically over a
1300px email, and horizontal positions match almost exactly.

## Unsubscribe

This is internal operational mail to your own agents, not commercial email, so CAN-SPAM's
opt-out requirement doesn't bite the way it did on the 30th anniversary invitation. The
footer is an address block. If your ESP insists on an opt-out for internal sends,
uncomment the marked row rather than letting the platform inject its own marketing-styled
footer into a black layout.

## The grid texture

The PDF has a faint grid pattern across the black. It measures `#0A0A0A` — a 4% difference
from the background that no screen shows through an email client's rendering. Reproducing
it would mean a tiled background image plus VML for Outlook, for a texture nobody sees, so
it's deliberately left out. The ground is pure `#000000`, matching the artboard.