Email Signature Generator

How to use the Email Signature Generator

1. Choose a template: Classic, Photo left, Compact or Banner.
2. Enter your name, title, company and contact details, and optionally a photo or logo URL and social links.
3. Pick an accent color and font, and check the live preview.
4. Click Copy signature and paste it into the signature settings of Gmail, Outlook or Apple Mail.

Features

• Four table-based templates built for email clients
• Photo or logo from any https image URL
• Clickable phone, email, website and social links
• Accent color and web-safe font choice
• Copies rich HTML, with plain text as a fallback
• HTML source and .html download for other tools

What makes a good email signature

An email signature does a small job: tell people who you are and how to reach you, consistently, on every message. The best ones are short (four to six lines), readable on a phone, and free of anything that might break: no giant images, no text inside pictures, no inspirational quotes. Name, job title, company, one or two phone numbers, a website and a couple of relevant social links cover nearly everyone.

Why the templates use tables and inline styles

Email apps are not web browsers. Many ignore style sheets, strip classes and render layouts differently; classic Outlook for Windows uses Microsoft Word’s engine to display HTML. Tables with inline styles are the one layout method that works almost everywhere, so every template here is built that way, with web-safe fonts such as Arial, Verdana and Georgia. A few things still vary: Outlook desktop shows round photos as squares and ignores some spacing, which is why the designs still look tidy without them.

How to add your signature

Gmail (web)

1. Click Copy signature above.
2. In Gmail, open Settings (gear icon) → See all settings → General.
3. Under Signature, click Create new, name it and paste into the box.
4. Choose it under Signature defaults, then click Save Changes at the bottom of the page.

Gmail limits signatures to 10,000 characters, which these templates stay well under.

Outlook (web and new Outlook)

1. Open Settings → Account → Signatures.
2. Create a new signature, paste into the editor and save.
3. Choose it as the default for new messages and replies.

Classic Outlook for Windows

Go to File → Options → Mail → Signatures, click New, paste into the editing box, set the defaults and click OK.

Apple Mail (Mac)

1. Open Mail → Settings (or Preferences) → Signatures.
2. Select the account, click + and paste into the right-hand pane.
3. Untick Always match my default message font so your fonts and colors are kept.

Images: photos and logos

Email signatures load images from the web, so the image must already be online at a public https address, such as your company website. Pasting a file from your computer will not work in most apps. Keep the file small, ideally under 100 KB; the Image Compressor and Image Resizer help. Some recipients’ apps block remote images until they click “show images”, which is another reason never to put essential text inside a picture.

Tips

• Use the same accent color as your company brand; the Color Picker can find its hex code.
• Write phone numbers in international format, such as +1 555 123 4567, if you email people abroad.
• Test by sending an email to yourself on a phone and a computer.
• Keep your job title identical to the one on your resume and LinkedIn profile.

Frequently asked questions