Here's a short summary of my journey as an artist, making a living:
1. Originally launched http://fairpixels.co to design logos on a pay-what-you-want basis
2. To help market this service, I open sourced the unused logo designs I regularly would make for companies over at http://logodust.com. This resulted in a ton of growth, getting covered by sites like TNW and Inc. Giving away stuff for free helped me grow the business beyond myself.
3. Then I recently launched http://flypx.com, to create a more steady income for myself and fellow artists. Where the goal is to spend less time marketing oneself as an artist to attract clients, and constantly provide value to companies. The designers/artists get to work their craft and constantly improve. While the clients get to work with a single designer over a longer period of time for a fraction of the cost.
It can be a struggle to make a living as an artist, but once you combine entrepreneurial marketing strategies to simplify the flow of work, things can work out pretty well
I really enjoyed reading this and was pleasantly surprised to find it on HN. There is a really interesting intersection of art and hacking that I don't think we talk about enough.
If I wanted to find more stuff like this, where should I look?
I don't really know about intersection of art and hacking, maybe Dorkbot, Ars Electronica, MIT's http://hackingarts.com/
Most artists work in what is sometimes called MCA (mainstream contemporary art) as opposed to NMA (new media art). The use of TLAs to describe the sub-fields is something Ed Shanken invented, coming from the tech side. If you google "MCA NMA art" you can get an insight into that discourse.
Apart from digital tech, a lot of artists are into bricolage and DIY engineering. I don't have a good link to a web resource for that scene, maybe because their focus is on individualistic tinkering on mechanical devices, not web media.
You could try Michael Craig Martin's recent book for general thoughts on artistic practice.
Here's a short summary of my journey as an artist, making a living:
1. Originally launched http://fairpixels.co to design logos on a pay-what-you-want basis
2. To help market this service, I open sourced the unused logo designs I regularly would make for companies over at http://logodust.com. This resulted in a ton of growth, getting covered by sites like TNW and Inc. Giving away stuff for free helped me grow the business beyond myself.
3. Then I recently launched http://flypx.com, to create a more steady income for myself and fellow artists. Where the goal is to spend less time marketing oneself as an artist to attract clients, and constantly provide value to companies. The designers/artists get to work their craft and constantly improve. While the clients get to work with a single designer over a longer period of time for a fraction of the cost.
I had written about this last chapter of my story as an artist and how I got to #1,596/MRR in 48 hours: https://medium.com/art-marketing/how-we-launched-a-new-servi...
It can be a struggle to make a living as an artist, but once you combine entrepreneurial marketing strategies to simplify the flow of work, things can work out pretty well