Speci is back, on a shiny new platform

Hey there, Jack here 👋

Long time no speak. I'm sorry about that.

My new job – as Head of Brand and Product Marketing over at Plum – has been keeping me very busy. We launched a market-leading Cash ISA, exchange traded funds in the EU and we've been working hard behind the scenes on a comprehensive brand refresh which I'm excited for the world to see later this year.

Speci's left Substack

I started my new job in January – a month or so after The Atlantic published Substack Has a Nazi Problem.

Lots of writers left the platform as a result – including Casey Newton, who writes my favourite newsletter, Platformer. Rather than trying to find a new home for Speci immediately, I just stopped writing entirely – mainly because I felt as though I needed to spend time finding a new home on the internet, and I wanted to do it right. In truth, I just didn't have the time to spend migrating the site.

But I miss writing a lot. And I didn't feel comfortable keeping Speci on Substack. I was going to write about why – but I think a better use of your time is to read Casey Newton's Why Platformer is leaving Substack from earlier this year.

He did not take the decision to leave Substack lightly. He was one of the first big names on Substack – leaving The Verge to start his own thing – and is, I think, responsible for a lot of the platform's early growth.

In the article, Casey explains in great detail and excellent transparency his thought process, the actions he took and ultimately his reasons for moving his newsletter off've Substack and over to Ghost.

I've spent some time figuring out where to move Speci. One wonderful thing about the internet in 2024 is that it is more no code than ever – pretty much anyone can set up a website really quickly. Realistically, for my skill level, my options were:

• Squarespace
• WordPress
• Ghost
• Medium

I landed on Ghost, like Platformer did. It's super easy. It has a handy migration tool as well as a great set of member management, brand design and writing features. It let me customise the site the most (with custom domains, colours etc), whilst feeling the easiest to use for what I want to use it for.

So here I am, and here you are – hopefully feeling like not much has changed even though everything in the background has.

Speci is back

And so now we're back – I am recommitting to writing on a regular basis.

I hope I can continue to write things about technology, marketing and brands that you find interesting, entertaining and useful.

Speci looks different

I've also taken this as a chance to change the look and feel of Speci. Speci's main colour is now yellow, with purple as its accent colour. The logo is a cube, floating in space with a corner pointing towards you, and I'm using square shapes as a design device.

I chose yellow because colour theory says it's a joyful colour that makes people feel happy.

The logo is a cube, and supporting images will be in cubes, squares or rectangles. I chose these shapes because so much of the technology we discuss here comes in shapes with four edges – admittedly more rectangles than squares, but including squares gives us a little more room for expanding that design world out a bit.

Obviously I am not a designer! I am hoping, though, that over time the design of Speci continues to become more and more refined. I'm sure you can tell, but right now these images are AI generated.

For the more internet-inclined amongst you – Speci also has a new domain. You can now reach Speci just by typing speci.news into your browser.

I'm excited about doing more with Speci again

Stay tuned for more.

Thanks again for being a subscriber, and I'll see you soon 👋