14 Comments
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Vanessa Hunter's avatar

Great message. I largely quit social media earlier this year, but have doubted the decision and still struggle over whether it was the right thing to do. Thanks for your take on it. Super helpful.

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Adam Ming's avatar

I’m glad it was helpful!

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Virginia Neely's avatar

This is a great process and I'm happy to say I've got Phase 1 under control and a bit of Phase 2 and 3. The credit for a lot of that goes to you. Since I've started just doing the 10 minute artist routine, I can see some improvement in my Ugly Work. I really meant to take out a paid subscription when you were offering half off, but procrastinated and now it's too late. I loathe social media in general and refuse to use Instagram, where most artists post, because IG is very clear you are assigning them a licence to anything you post, to use any way they wish. Substack doesn't do that, and though it isn't perfect, the tone here is so much higher it's worth participating.

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Adam Ming's avatar

People move, and the only reason we go to platforms is to meet the people... Phase one is definately where it's at!

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Nicole Tharin's avatar

Thank you for your constructive and positive outlook. Social media can be daunting and frustrating. While an in-person conversation will always have its importance, I've learned so much thanks to content people have shared openly on social media... and on such a wide array of subjects! If used with a grain of salt (and I'm still learning), social media can be a meaningful and fun way of connecting.

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Adam Ming's avatar

It's a new form of public speaking, and historically, speaking to groups of people has always been a valuable skill

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Sarah Lovell's avatar

Thanks for your take on social media. I really enjoyed reading your post .

I still enjoy it mostly and try to see it as fun .

It is so great when people like your work and you make connections. There’s also no escaping that art directors are looking there for illustrators .

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Adam Ming's avatar

I’m glad you enjoy it, there are a lot of good bits and you gotta know the parts to avoid!

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Jason McBride's avatar

I really enjoyed this post, Adam! I’ve been thinking about my social media options and I love the ways you talk about sharing the artifacts of the creative process!

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Adam Ming's avatar

The important thing is making stuff… promotion is important too, but that’s a different thing! A couple of years ago Quintin Blake stayed in his studio for a year and drew every day, every day someone would come and take pictures of the drawings and chat with him, now it’s a book, find a way to promote sure… but not at the expense of the making :)

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Michelle Lin's avatar

I really enjoyed this post! Creating a newsletter for my illustration has been on my to-do list. Unlike many people, I don't actually hate Instagram and I see it more as a place to meet other creatives rather than to "sell" myself to art directors or potential clients. As someone who is taking a break from art school, I definitely need that community! I also get decent engagement (probably because I hashtag my posts to death) so I don't feel like I'm posting into a void. I do not, however, like Meta scraping our images for AI. Fortunately I was able to get my husband to opt me out when he was in Portugal, but am still posting cautiously and not as often as before.

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namrata ukani's avatar

Thank you for this newsletter. Really puts things in perspective.

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Adam Ming's avatar

Thank you for reading!

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