The impact of transmission design and spatial correlation on the symbol error rate (SER) is analyzed for multi-antenna communication links. The receiver has perfect channel state information (CSI), while the transmitter has either statistical or no CSI. The transmission is based on orthogonal space-time block codes (OSTBCs) and linear precoding. The precoding strategy that minimizes the worst-case SER is derived for the case when the transmitter has no CSI. Based on this strategy, the intuitive result that spatial correlation degrades the SER performance is proved mathematically. In the case when the transmitter knows the channel statistics, the correlation matrix is assumed to be jointly-correlated (a generalization of the Kronecker model). The eigenvectors of the SER-optimal precoding matrix are shown to originate from the correlation matrix and the remaining power allocation is a convex problem. Equal power allocation is SER-optimal at high SNR. Beamforming is SER-optimal at low SNR, or for increasing constellation sizes, and its optimality range is characterized. A heuristic low-complexity power allocation is proposed and evaluated numerically. Finally, it is proved analytically that receive-side correlation always degrades the SER. Transmit-side correlation will however improve the SER at low to medium SNR, while its impact is negligible at high SNR.