The user only focuses on the content, visuals, and anything that distract him from the main objective, he hardly pays heed to it. When I say border I mean an overall borderline covering the entire newsletter/emailer i.e (top, bottom, left, right), as rules (top/bottom borders) still holds its importance for better content hierarchies.
Susan Weinschenk, the author of “100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People” says that People scan screens based on past experiences and expectations. If they read in a language that moves from left to right, then they tend to look at the screen from left to right. If they read from right to left, it is the opposite. They tend to look at the center of the screen and avoid the edges.
People have gotten used to the idea that there are things on computer screens that are less relevant to the task at hand, such as logos, blank space, and navigation bars. The users mainly focus on their goal for which they have come to your website or to read your newsletter.
Good design is obvious, Great design is transparent.
When users are looking for a timely content and relevant information, which is useful for them and easier to read, they subscribe for a newsletter or promotional emailers. People create a mental model of where things tend to be on computer screens, and a mental model for particular applications, Web sites or emailers that they use. They tend to look at a screen based on these mental models. They skip the edges of a screen and move to the meaningful information, which is required. Our brain hardly registers anything else unless we want the user to notice, by showcasing loud design elements up front or to separate it from the regular content.
For desktop users you might want to give a border to the newsletters when the foreground and background colors are the same, just to show the content width or to separate it from the remaining background. But when the colors are different, the width of newsletters are clearly visible and giving a border is not necessary. However, for mobile users, background colors are not visible as mailers are usually made around of 630px width, which covers the whole screens of their mobiles, where the background color behind the mailers is hardly visible, so a border to it is not required at all. It is an extra element in the design and the design is about subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful.
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Views expressed in this article are my personal.
