Issue in creating email teamplate - html

Question

I am trying to create an email template like following. I have used table. I am able to do everything except the image is not displayed at proper position. The images should be displayed in middle and on top of the container(see screen 1), but I am not able accomplished it. I have tried to provide negative margin to container, but gmail and other mail services are ignoring the negative margin.
Here's what I was able to accomplishd till so far.
The code is present here. Can anyone please help with this?

Answer 1

Updated answer:
You can't use negative margin in html email. To mimic this, there are 2 ways to do it, the nested tables way and the more complex rowspan way:
<!-- The nested way -->
<table width="500" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" bgcolor="#CCCCCC"><!-- coloring the whole table instead of just the cells you want, will stop gaps forming on forwarding from Outlook -->
<tr>
<td width="200" height="80" bgcolor="#007700">
<table width="100%" height="80" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
<tr>
<td height="40" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td height="40" bgcolor="#CCCCCC">
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</td>
<td width="100" height="80" bgcolor="#4444FF">
<img alt="" src="" width="100" height="80" style="margin: 0; border: 0; padding: 0; display: block;">
</td>
<td width="200" height="80" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<table width="100%" height="80" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
<tr>
<td height="40" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td height="40" bgcolor="#CCCCCC">
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="500" height="200" colspan="3">
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<br><br>
<!-- The fancy rowspan way -->
<table width="500" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" bgcolor="#CCCCCC"><!-- coloring the whole table instead of just the cells you want, will stop gaps forming on forwarding from Outlook -->
<tr>
<td width="200" height="40" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
</td>
<td width="100" height="80" rowspan="2" bgcolor="#4444FF">
<img alt="" src="" width="100" height="80" style="margin: 0; border: 0; padding: 0; display: block;">
</td>
<td width="200" height="40" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="200" height="40">
</td>
<td width="200" height="40">
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="500" height="200" colspan="3">
</td>
</tr>
</table>
Original answer:
For basic positioning:
Horizontally, use align="left|center|right", vertically use valign="top|middle|bottom"
Here is how to place an image center top of a table:
<table width="500" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" bgcolor="#CCCCCC">
<tr>
<td height="500" align="center" valign="top">
<img alt="" src="" width="100" height="100" style="margin: 0; border: 0; padding: 0; display: block;">
</td>
</tr>
</table>

Answer 2

As I said:
If it was me i would make the top border and the image a row. – Alex
Thomas 23 mins ago
Change you top row to:
<td valign="bottom">
<b style="border-top-left-radius:5px; background-color:#fff; display:block; border:3px solid #a3a9ac; border-bottom:0; height:100%; margin:0; padding-bottom:20px; border-right:none;"> </b>
</td>
<td class="text-center" width="64">
<img class="top-image" src="https://cdn1.iconfinder.com/data/icons/WPZOOM_Social_Networking_Icon_Set/64/gmail.png"> </td>
<td valign="bottom">
<b style="border-top-right-radius:5px; background-color:#fff; display:block; border:3px solid #a3a9ac; border-bottom:0; height:100%; margin:0; padding-bottom:20px; border-left:none;"> </b>
</td>
check out the result - http://jsfiddle.net/562ux.
I've not tested this in a email Client, but as #Kheema Pandey says, you should try to use inline styles.

Answer 3

It is a good practice to use inline style while creating newsletter. Also outlook doesn't support margin negative property.
in your case the image is not appear center so you can use a inline style here 'style="text-align:center;"'.
<td style="text-align:center;">
<img class="top-image" src="https://cdn1.iconfinder.com/data/icons/WPZOOM_Social_Networking_Icon_Set/64/gmail.png" />
</td>