DHH:
These days Medium is focused on their membership offering, though. Trying to aggregate writing from many sources and sell a broad subscription on top of that. And it’s a neat model, and it’s wonderful to see Medium try something different. But it’s not for us, and it’s not for Signal v Noise.
SvN was not long for Medium. It never felt at home there. Basecamp (the company, formerly known as 37 Signals) has too strong of a voice and brand design to ever have their blog live inside a platform with such web and brand hostility as Medium.
I think back to 2012 when SvN redesigned, I linked to that redesign then, and how they had carefully considered their typography, graphics (they had a different graphic for each category of posts), layout. Mig Reyes, at the time, wrote:
Instead of poring over other blogs, I spent a week studying books, magazines, and of course, Bringhurst. Capturing the right feel for body text was step one—it sets the tone from here on out.
If you care this much about your site/blog you cannot be holed up in some constrained content silo like Medium. Medium is an excellent (perhaps currently the best) web-based writing tool but the platform is more than just that. It promised exposure which is why many blogs like SvN gave it a try. But that was definitely the wrong reason to go there.
Nice pick up for WordPress of course but in reality SvN could have found a home on any platform they had full control over. I like the new design too.