Nightscribe
A horror library that gets easier to read as it grows.
Ten years of creepypasta, a loyal community, and a website that had stopped moving: that was the starting point in 2022, when I was asked, as a favour, to help renew an old horror platform. The renewal worked, but the foundation couldn’t carry what we saw the platform could become, so we started over. The result is Nightscribe, a library of indie horror, thriller and dark fiction for readers, writers and narrators at once. I co-founded it and designed it end to end, from strategy to the design system it runs on today.
Role
Co-founder, Product Designer
launch
2024
Scope
Strategy, UX/UI, Design System
Scale
11K+ stories, 6K authors
Live
The Challenge
The old platform came with a loyal community and ten years of stories, and almost nothing underneath that could support growth. Whatever replaced it had to serve three audiences at once, because running separate products was never realistic for two people building in the weekends next to full-time jobs. And a library becomes more hostile as it succeeds: every story added makes the next one harder to find.
The Design
Layered discovery instead of one front door.
A single trending list stops working somewhere past a few hundred stories. Nightscribe opens through parallel entry points: trending, top rated, editor's picks, narrations and tag browsing, so a first-time visitor and a returning reader both land on something worth their evening without scrolling through the same wall of titles.
Five entry points on the homepage, so no single list has to carry the whole catalogue.
A second product for writers.
Readers need to find stories; writers need a reason to keep publishing. Their side of the platform has its own logic: profiles, publishing tools and visibility mechanics that reward quality over volume. The two sides feed each other, which is exactly why splitting them was never an option.
The writer’s side: profile, publishing tools and the visibility mechanics that reward quality over volume.
A reading environment that stays out of the way.
Near-black canvas, restrained typography, interface elements that withdraw once you start reading. The story is the product; the interface’s only job is to get out of its way.
Reading view. Near-black canvas, one typeface, chrome that fades once you start.
Narration gets its own shelf.
Narrators turn written stories into an audio catalogue with its own discovery surfaces. Giving narration equal footing with text gave the same library a second life, and brought in a third audience with its own reasons to come back.
Example text
Where it stands now
Rebuilt in 2026, and finally on foundations that fit the ambition.
The 2024 version got Nightscribe live and proved the idea. It also taught us where the platform fell short of what we wanted it to become, so version 2.0 was a complete redesign - this time on a system built to grow. User numbers are climbing, slowly. The unsolved problem is the business model: we haven't found a way to introduce one without driving readers away. The apps we're building next are meant to change what the platform can carry.
Contact
Want to ship products together?
I'm looking for a team where design doesn't stop at handoff. If that sounds like yours, I'd like to hear about it.
Send me a message at martijnruitenbeek@gmail.com
Find me on LinkedIn