Author website —
Quinn Davids
From two voices, to one literary home.
An emerging author with two books in two emotional worlds needed a digital home that read like a writer's home — not a tech demo.
- Project
- Author website + newsletter
- For
- An emerging novelist
- Stack
- Next.js · Tailwind · Supabase · MailerLite · Resend
- Year
- 2026
Brief01
The brief
A working author site, not a marketing site.
A real digital home for an emerging novelist with two books in print. One place that could hold both novels without flattening them into a single template — and a newsletter that earned the email, instead of a popup that asked for it on arrival.
The site had to read like a writer's home: quiet, considered, a little bit dressed up. Somewhere a future reader, an agent, or a journalist could land and immediately feel they were in the hands of a real author.
How it works01b
How the site actually works
Two distinct moods. Three email lists. One quietly engineered nurture loop.
The home page carries two distinct moods — one per book. The visitor's choice of book reshapes the colour world (Midnight + Ember for Book One, Sea + Foam for Book Two), so the same site feels like a different room depending on which novel you came for.
Every visitor can read chapter one and part of chapter two for free. The second half of chapter two sits behind a quiet email gate.
- 01
Subscribe to a book list.
The reader subscribes to one of the two book-specific MailerLite lists to unlock the rest of chapter two. The remaining chapter — plus an Amazon link for chapter three — arrives in their inbox the moment they confirm.
- 02
Two lists at once, with intention.
Subscribing to a book list also lands them on the general Quinn Davids newsletter — but the book-specific sequence runs first. Only after that nurture flow finishes do they transition cleanly into the general list.
- 03
General newsletter, separately.
Anyone can subscribe to the general newsletter directly from the site, with a warm welcome email — no book gate required.
Constraints02
What shaped it
Four real-world pressures we listened to before we drew anything.
Two books, two emotional weathers.
Trying Not To Disappear is intimate and dark; The Space Life Leaves Behind is cool, oceanic, spacious. One palette wouldn't serve both — but a fragmented site wouldn't either.
U-Spire DNA in the background.
The studio's contrasty, poster-loud energy isn't the writer's voice. The Quinn site had to feel quieter without becoming generic — borrow the parent brand's logic, then dial it for a reader holding a book at midnight.
Most readers arrive on a phone.
After a recommendation, after a podcast, after a review. The narrowest layout had to read clean before the widest one earned the right to exist.
The newsletter is a relationship, not a capture.
An email signup felt right only if it grew naturally out of the reading experience — never popped on arrival, never traded for a discount.
Concept03
The thinking, on paper
Three concept artefacts that came before the build. Each one is a decision frozen in place so the team could keep building on it.
Decisions04
How we got there
The four calls that defined the rest of the design.
- 01
A brand voice study before any pixel.
Two columns on one page comparing U-Spire's loud poster energy with Quinn's quiet literary voice. Naming the contrast was the first real decision — once we'd named it, we knew which choices belonged to which voice.
- 02
Palette, inherited and recalibrated.
Paper, Ink Aubergine, Soft Ink, Ember, Sea, Midnight. Same duality logic as the parent brand, dialled for a reader holding a book at midnight rather than a poster across a room.
- 03
Colour worlds per book.
Book One lives in Midnight + Ember; Book Two lives in Sea + Foam. The site shifts as you walk it — the same building, different weather in different rooms.
- 04
The chapter-two gate.
Readers can read the opening freely, then the page asks for an email before chapter two. The newsletter sign-up is the next natural step in the reading flow, not an interruption to it.
Result05
The home it became
One quiet website carrying two distinct moods. A reader can sit with Book One in lamplight and walk through to Book Two in oceanic light without leaving the page. The newsletter feels like the next chapter — not a marketing form.
Most importantly: it reads like Quinn's site. Not the studio's, not a template's, not a generic author wrapper. The decisions in the concept work are visible in every screen.
The delivered site
Eight screens from the live site. The colour worlds shift; the voice doesn't.
In closing —
Two book worlds, one writer's voice. The decisions came from listening, not from picking a template.