So who died and made me the email critic? Not sure, but I woke up with this snarky crown and I intend to use it. Time to get one last gripe in before the leprechaun who stole my good mood is apprehended.

Like I said before (see my article on Apple OS X Lion), I’m in this new world of just skimming my entire email from within my inbox. I make my reading decisions based how the email looks and if I trust the sender. So here’s an example where the newsletter in question got past those conditions, but chased me out once I got to reading the first paragraph.

I Love Yelp

God bless Yelp. I mean it. I can’t get by without it. And if you’re not religious, you should at least believe in Yelp. I use it all the time to figure out where to eat, where to stay on vacation, and everything else. I bet you could even find a church, synagogue, temple, mosque or an atheist club with it. Or not.

Some Please Help Yelp’s Newsletter

I hope they don’t hate me for saying this, especially seeing how I love their service so much, so let me do it quietly: THERE ARE TOO MANY COLORS IN YOUR EMAIL’S PARAGRAPH TEXT. Gray, blue, black & red all in the same paragraph is just too much. And the orange headlines just kick me when I’m down.

I tried to read the info, I really did. But it was all just too confusing for these old eyes of mine. And there are plenty of subscribers my age and older. Who knows, maybe it’s supposed to look like a party. More probable: their website below (which works fine for me, btw).

You Can Hurt an Otherwise Great Newsletter with the Crayola Effect

I would love that Yelp newsletter if it wasn’t for all those colors. But I’m still going to use Yelp, especially on my phone. And maybe I’ll keep the subscription just because they’re so darn useful. Or not. Why subscribe to an email newsletter that hurts my eyes? If only the emails were as simple and clean looking as the their phone app: