

Show HN: Boldfaced, a portfolio designed for showing off writing - kylebragger

I'm working on a new product for writers called Boldfaced. Its goal is to help writers of all kinds show off their best work, by giving them a great-looking portfolio designed for showing off the written word. If you're a writer, I'd love to have you get set up, and to hear your feedback. Longer term, my goal is to facilitate connections between great writers and great gigs.<p>Signup here: http://www.boldfaced.net/signup<p>Sample profile: http://simon.boldfaced.net/<p>Feedback: kyle at elepath dot com
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unalone
I like the name, the typography's decent, and I'm fond of that shade of green.
The layout is very, very messy. It feels like a poorly-styled tumblelog, what
with the huge emphasis on snippets and the constant centered-ness of
everything.

For some reason, the linear display of one quote after another doesn't work
for me at all. It feels loose. A portfolio should feel denser, like it's
bursting with interesting things everywhere you look. But perhaps that's just
the ugliness of the centered-quotes approach.

But seriously, rethink the quotes-only approach. Writing is about so much more
than quick snippets. I know plenty of brilliant writers who would be grossly
underserviced by this approach – Gene Weingarten and David Foster Wallace are
two authors whose styles are drastically different but which are each
difficult to "snippet" meaningfully. Your challenge, if you want to make a
site like this, is to make a site that _respects_ writing, as deeply and as
thoroughly as is possible without sacrificing snappiness and elegance.

That said, you're working on something that would make the Internet a better
place -- oh wait! I just realized you're from Elepath! Is this an official
Elepath project then? That's neat, and good luck to you and Jakob and the rest
of the team.

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Bramble
>But seriously, rethink the quotes-only approach. Writing is about so much
more than quick snippets.

I agree. When I read the blurb of the website, I thought "okay, it's a place
to show off writing; awesome," and I was actually confused by the just-quotes
format. Quotes do not make writing. I was hoping that clicking one of the
quotes would bring me to an essay, story, or longer excerpt of writing, but no
dice.

Many of the quotes on the sample page beg for context, and my eyes glazed over
as I scrolled down the page.

Sure, the page looks neat at first glance, but I'm not really sure what this
website is trying to achieve. I like to write poems and short stories and I am
an avid reader. I don't really see one-line quotes as a way to show off that
kind of work, and I wouldn't buy a novel based off one line. But perhaps I'm
missing the point of the website?

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kylebragger
You're certainly not missing the point; the pull quotes clearly aren't cutting
it. :) Going to spend the weekend reworking the way work is presented. Ideally
I'd like to offer a few templates for work, such that the user can pick
short/medium/long-form, or, perhaps make it based specifically on the category
(poem, novel, tagline, etc.)

The intention of the site is to help writers show off work elegantly, though,
seems I'm not quite there yet.

Thanks for the feedback!

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imcrs
In my opinion, you should left justify the quotes, make the color of the
quotes a dark body color, and then make the clients' names in the lovely shade
of green.

When substantial text is centered, it does add emphasis, but it also reduces
readability. When the entire page is centered, there's less readability but no
gain in emphasis. And it is the same case, more or less, with color; a strong
color is strong only in contrast to a more subtle color. The key is not to
overload on strong elements (like alignment, text decoration, and odd fonts)
while emphasizing which elements really need to stand out.

It does sound like a great idea!

~~~
kylebragger
Appreciate the feedback!

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sashagim
Sound like a great idea, good luck!

I often read a paragraph or two from a book just to get the feel of it, so if
your site would display those, people like me could use it as a sort of
discovery engine for book or authors.

In terms of design - take a look at changemakrs.com, they're doing a good job
at presenting content (quotes, in their case) in a very appealing way.

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sixQuarks
I like the idea. Kind of like a dribbble.com for copy writers. I would use the
site to look for a copy writer. Good luck!

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WadeF
Agreed. Designers have dribbble and developers have github. doesn't seem like
there's a great place for copywriters to share copy snippets and discuss them.

I'd use a site like that to test early copy iterations pretty frequently.

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kylebragger
Interesting to hear!

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juliska
Sounds like wattpad.com

