Let a brother cook

_{Day 241/100}

Hey—It's Tim. 

I don't brag about my brother enough.

He does all our frontend at Penfriend. And with Echo re-launching, I'm once again dealing with the fact that it looks so good I get annoyed.

I love well designed things. I think I can design pretty well. But it is literally my brother’s job.

The Before:

A year ago I dumped this in front of him:

"I know, I know. It's a mess. Please make it look better. It's literally 5 pages of just scribbles."

That was the brief.

The After:

We have an interactive style guide now. Full animations. The kind of thing where you open it and immediately want to screenshot it.
And I have. I’ve taken many screenshots of it.

Some of my favorites:

The Echo Flow

You can see how your writing style changes throughout an article. It's not static. It moves. It breathes.

Click a dimension? It highlights just that one. Shows you where you leaned into it. Where you backed off.

The tone breakdowns

Open any of the 5 dimensions and it explains why you got that score. Then shows you examples. Your actual sentences. Proving it.

Not vague. Not generic. Your words.

Writing principles

Your do's and don'ts. Your language swaps. What you lean into. What you avoid.

Again, with examples pulled from your content.

It's so good.

I love it.

That's the whole email.

I just needed to give credit where credit is due.

My brother built something I'm genuinely proud to put in front of people.

And if you haven't made your own Echo yet, you should.

Not because I'm selling you something.

Because it's Friday, the sun's out, and you deserve to see what your writing actually looks like when someone gives a damn about the frontend.

See you tomorrow.

✌️ Tim "Biased, but I’m right" Hanson
CMO @Penfriend.ai

Same brain, different platforms: X, Threads, LinkedIn.

P.S. The thing about working with family: You can't fake enthusiasm. If it was bad, I'd just... not mention it. But it's actually good. So here we are.

Penfriend.ai
Made by content marketers. Used by better ones.