Style Your Stack Design: Eileen Dougharty

Brilliant observations, some dark humor, and more heart than I can express.

Kudos from Eileen Dougharty of You’re Right, I Do Look Tired

Working with Nan is a truly collaborative process. I had no clue where to begin, I just knew I wanted to make my Substack more eye-catching and reflective of my personality. Nan encouraged me to explore colors and fonts and come up with themes that spoke to me. We exchanged some possibilities with Nan using her expertise to guide me on what would best represent my unique style. Nan was receptive, reassuring, and adamant that I was pleased with the results. Between her knowledge of the platform and her exquisite taste, there is truly no one better than Nan Tepper to elevate your Substack to the next level.

I’m not sure how or where or why I met Eileen Dougharty, but I know I met her on Substack! And it was love at first read, and second, and third. And the more I read her work the more I loved her. Her writing, her humanity, her refusal to suffer fools gladly, her stubborn commitment to her health and quality of life, her courage, her reality-based view of the world, and her ability to tell a story that invites me in and makes me want to stay forever, those are just some of the reason I love Eileen. She reads my essays at The Next Write Thing and always has something lovely to say, and she restacks my stories, as well. As I mentioned, I have no recollection of how we bumped into each other, and I’m too tired to figure out this chicken/egg thing, and really, when it comes down to it, does it really even matter? Nope. The thing that matters most to me is building a friendship with her and getting to read her marvelous work and contribute in a small way to her growth on Substack.

Something kind of crazy happened to Eileen recently, and it affected me, too. I woke up one morning about 3 weeks ago, and picked up my phone to look at what transpired on Substack while I slept. I do that every morning. Overnight I had picked up over 100 new subscribers to my writing stack as if by magic. And I noticed something. Almost every one came from Eileen’s recommendation of The Next Write Thing. So I reached out to her. And do know what she told me? No, of course you don’t. She’d written a Note….and it went viral. She unwittingly wooed the algorithm, and the algorithm wooed back. She didn’t pick up 200 subscribers, she gained over 2000 new subscribers in 24 hours. Holy shit. Oops. I cursed. That reminds me of a message Eileen received from one of her new readers. This woman, we’ll call her “NH,” expressed her disdain that Eileen uses salty words. She advised her to clean up her language, “old people don’t like to read dirty words” or some such, and then quickly unsubscribed. Not a bad retention rate!

Don’t let the door hit you in the ass, as you leave, NH (no heart, no humor, not havingit). Have a good life and a little advice from me. Lighten up, live a little. It feels really good. Let those f-bombs fly.

Here’s the note:

Do you see that number? Eight thousand four hundred and twenty three likes. In twenty four hours! And five hundred and fifty six restacks! WOWEE!

She went from under 1000 subscribers to well over 3000. Amazing!

After her boost in popularity, Eileen got in touch with me, and said, “now that I’ve hit the big time, I guess it’s time to up my game, wanna style my stack?”

Silly question. Of course I do! We got on a call and started brainstorming.

Here’s a thing to know about Eileen. She’s an active, vital woman with a Parkinson’s diagnosis. She works a physically demanding, emotionally challenging job, and is getting ready for a surgery that could very likely improve the quality of her day-to-day life significantly. You cannot keep this human down. She’s got spirit, savvy, and the kind of inner strength I’ve rarely witnessed. I’m so blessed to have her as a new friend.

The Work:

Now, let’s get down to it. As I do with all my clients, I ask a lot of questions about who they are, their likes and dislikes, I do check their party affiliation, as well (only kind of kidding). I always Zoom with new clients so I can see their clothing, environment, bookshelves, personal style, knick-knacks, you know, them. I want to see my new client.

We needed to come up with an image that would represent her, the icon that would say a lot about who she is. She gave me a list of meaningful objects; a claddagh ring, the adaptor for old 45 rpm records, she described herself as salty, she sent a veritable portfolio of portraits, at my request. I worked with some of the images, but nothing was speaking to me, they weren’t capturing her. And, I knew why. They didn’t represent the title of her stack and her multitude of interests and experience.

And most importantly, how she lives her life.

I knew what I wanted to do.

I just love it when that lightbulb flicks on, hovering over my head like cartoons!

Here it is. An unmade, empty bed. Because, we’re right. She DOES look tired! In spite of everything, the diagnosis, the challenging job, the meds, the tests, the ups, the downs, she keeps going. She keeps getting out of bed and doing her life. It was the perfect choice. And then, I integrated some of her favorite talismans:

From left to right: The 45, the former photo of Eileen that she used as her logo, the claddagh, the tough leather jacket silhouette I pulled from a photo of her and the salt shaker, for my salty pal. All in gilt frames because she’s elegant that way! And of course, the bed.

I went on to create the other visual assets for her stack. The divider (several versions) to replace Substack’s subtle (boring) default one. The wordmark (Eileen looked through hundreds of fonts and we narrowed it down), the logo, and a photo collage for her to use anyway she likes.

The Wordmark:

We looked at 15 rendered versions of the wordmark before we decided to go with this one. We thought a font that looked like scrawled handwriting would fit the bill, and it’s called “Rock Salt.” That clinched it!

Logo/Icon:

I used the bed and created the logo. It’s a little more detailed than I like, I try for the simplest scaled down image/icon I can use that still connects the reader to the stack, but this was perfect.

The Divider:

I riff on the icons I design to create sleek, custom dividers. I did two variations with the 45 adaptor, and one with the bed.

Welcome page:

This is the welcome page is the page people come to on the website (not the app) when they’re not subscribers already. I like them to be smashing!

And one more fun treat, a photo collage, featuring the many faces of Eileen!

That’s a wrap! Now, fly on over to You’re Right, I Do Look Tired and get to know Eileen! You won’t regret it…let’s see if we can get her another 2000 subscribers! And maybe a few more paying ones!

If you need some inspiration, some great graphics that pop, and more creative ideas about looking your best on Substack, get in touch with me. I’m also teaching a Zoom Master Class in May 2025.