How do I make my newsletter look professional without a designer?

The first time I saw a really well-designed newsletter, I assumed someone paid a designer a fortune. Then I figured out how it was built.

"I remember when I first saw these, I'm like, oh my God, how do you design all this? It's like, they're just images. That's all it is. Images and page breaks."

Every section header, banner and graphic in my newsletters was a Canva image, some with a link embedded. Each piece is simple. How you place them is what makes it look good.

Does design matter if readers never notice it?

Readers don't consciously pick the prettier newsletter. Subconsciously, though, a polished one says someone put real effort in and it's worth reading.

How much it matters depends on competition. In a town of 25,000 with nobody else doing a newsletter, I'd tell you to just launch. In a bigger market with real competitors, the newsletter needs to pop more, and design is a big piece of that.

It matters more now that AI is here. More unprofessional newsletters are coming. When you've put real effort into your brand, people instinctively know a machine didn't just spit it out.

What do you actually build in Canva?

• Category titles as images. Most people just use a plain text header. A designed title adds professionalism fast.
• Your brand font on those titles. Readers keep feeling the branding as they scroll.
• A background that isn't white. Almost every email is white. A slightly different color is instant branding, and you can change it in Beehiiv without Canva.
• Colored boxes for sections. Grouping blocks on different background colors separates sections visually.
• Smaller images. When I don't want an image full size, I usually set it at 50 to 70%.
• A link on every item. People click, and that helps your click rate.

Be a little playful. If you're in a suburb with nothing super unique about it, you're trying to separate yourself from the boring legacy media company still hanging around town. My own logo is just a Canva font with some special lines around it, a bit of color and some angling. Nothing crazy.

Should you use Beehiiv's built-in templates?

Beehiiv launched templates, and I don't think they're what you want. Build your own layout once and save it as your template. Every week after that, all you change is the text and the images.

Use the template instead of duplicating last week's issue once your design is settled. Duplicating feels easier, but old links and images slip through. One operator I worked with duplicated an issue and the featured event image still pointed to last week's event. When you run several newsletters, old content blurs together and you can't tell what's for this week. Keep the template empty of links and images and add each week's items fresh.

Do you need to pay a designer?

Not to start. You don't need to spend five grand. A couple of hours with AI and Canva gets you something good, and in my opinion that alone can put you in the top 10 or 20% because so few people bother.

Once I had several newsletters, I decided design was worth paying for. A designer quoted me about $700 to design the full brand and the newsletter itself, and I thought it was totally worth it because we'd use it in every issue. A teammate said another newsletter designer charges $4,000 to $6,000 for the same kind of work. A designer friend of mine also built prompts that get AI to come up with strong design concepts, which my team then customizes.

Justin Gordon told me on my podcast he paid a designer once and reused the template for his second newsletter. That's the math: design once, use it everywhere. Readers in one city will never see your brand in another city, so reusing the same design across markets is fine.

When should you get the branding done?

Before the first issue. The welcome email, the landing page and your Facebook and Instagram ads all need a logo. Get the logo and design right at the beginning, too. You can always redo it, but it's a real pain. I already rebranded once because I threw the first one together not knowing if this was a real thing, and I'll probably rebrand again.

Can a newsletter have too much design?

Yes, and I've been there. Our newsletter got clipped because it was too long. All the links, a "more" button on every story and all the images added up. It looked great, in my opinion, and it still hurt deliverability. We deleted the extra buttons.

In 2026 I started redesigning our newsletters from first principles to make more ad revenue. My diagnosis: too many images, and image headers, even good-looking ones, aren't great for email systems if you can avoid them. Simpler takes less effort and less space, and that leaves more room and more value for advertisers. Before every send, run the pre-send checklist.