For years, Traverse City Web Design has helped develop, manage, and distribute the official weekly newsletter for Jim Caruso’s Cast Party at Birdland Jazz Club in New York City.
The newsletter reaches approximately 25,000 singers, actors, musicians, entertainment professionals, theater lovers, and fans of jazz, cabaret, and musical theater. Each edition gives readers a look back at the previous week’s performances, highlights upcoming shows at Birdland, and keeps the Cast Party community connected to one of New York City’s most unpredictable and entertaining Monday-night traditions.
Recently, we completed one of the newsletter’s most substantial visual updates to date. Send us an email at [email protected] if you want to subscribe!
Turning a Creative Concept Into a Working Email Template
Jim Caruso came to us with an image showing the style and general layout he wanted for the redesigned newsletter. Our job was to translate that visual concept into a functional email template that could be updated and sent through iContact every week.
That process is more complicated than building a standard webpage.
Modern websites give designers access to flexible layouts, advanced CSS, custom fonts, animation, responsive grids, and many other tools. Email design is far more restrictive. Every newsletter must display reliably across a wide variety of email programs, including Gmail, Outlook, Apple Mail, and mobile email applications, many of which interpret HTML and CSS differently.
The design therefore had to be attractive, easy to read, simple to update, and built with code that would remain dependable after being processed and delivered through an email marketing platform.
A Cleaner, More Editorial Design
The new layout gives the Cast Party newsletter a polished, editorial feel while retaining its playful show-business personality.
The redesigned template includes:
- A strong, recognizable Cast Party masthead
- Large featured photography
- Clearly defined “Last Week” and “Coming Up” sections
- Flexible spaces for performance recaps and upcoming events
- Clean typography and generous spacing
- Two-column promotional areas
- Photo credits, event times, and ticket links
- A consistent signature and social media footer
The finished design feels more like a compact entertainment publication than a traditional promotional email. It gives the photographs room to shine while making each story and event easy to scan.
Returning to Hand-Coded Email HTML
To build the new design properly, we returned to a workflow we had not used regularly in nearly ten years: hand-coding the newsletter in Adobe Dreamweaver.
And honestly, we still love it.
Dreamweaver gave us a practical environment for working directly with the newsletter’s HTML, adjusting table structures, cleaning up spacing, and testing the layout as it developed. Although modern web design has largely moved toward visual page builders and more advanced development systems, hand-coded HTML is still one of the most reliable approaches for creating complex email templates.
The structure needed to be intentionally simple and extremely clean. Email layouts often rely on HTML tables, inline styles, fixed content areas, and carefully controlled image dimensions. These techniques may feel old-fashioned compared with current website development, but they remain essential when consistency across email clients is the priority.
Designed for Weekly Updates
The template was not created as a one-time design. It needed to function as a reusable publishing system.
Each week, photographs, performance recaps, event descriptions, dates, times, and links can be replaced without rebuilding the entire newsletter. The layout remains consistent while still allowing each edition to feel different based on the performers and events being featured.
This balance was one of the most important parts of the project. The code had to be structured enough to protect the design but flexible enough to support an entirely new collection of content every Monday.
More Than a Newsletter
Cast Party has been part of the Birdland community since 2003, bringing together Broadway performers, jazz musicians, cabaret artists, comedians, newcomers, and occasional surprise guests.
The newsletter helps extend that sense of community beyond the club itself. It reminds longtime audience members what they experienced, introduces readers to new performers, promotes upcoming Birdland appearances, and gives thousands of entertainment fans a reason to return each week.
We are proud to help keep that connection going and equally proud of the clean, updated design now carrying the Cast Party newsletter into its next chapter.
For Traverse City Web Design, the project was also a reminder that good design is not defined by the newest software or the most advanced technology. Sometimes the right solution means returning to hand-written HTML, working carefully within strict limitations, and using a trusted program you have loved for years.
