Notes on Tattooing28

Why Most Social Media Advice for Tattoo Artists Gets It Wrong Before I was a tattooist, for over a decade I worked in marketing for one of the UK’s top twenty independent publishers. My job involved helping small creative businesses…

Artist-Owned Tattoo Supplies? Ownership, Consolidation & the Future of Tattooing. The debate around artist-owned tattoo supplies has become central to conversations about consolidation and ownership in the modern tattoo industry. It seems the conversation around tattoo industry consolidation isn’t going…

Tattoo Industry Downturn: Chaos, Reinvention & Opportunity Don’t Wait to Be Pushed. The tattoo industry downturn is reshaping how artists work, survive, and evolve in 2026. Work is slow. Not catastrophic. Not apocalyptic. But slower than it’s been in a…

The Next Generation of Tattooing: Building a Career That Lasts The next generation of tattooing will be shaped not just by style, but by how artists adapt, stay curious, and build careers that last. Tattooing doesn’t stand still, even when…

The Death of Monoculture in Tattooing Monoculture in tattooing has emerged through social media algorithms, trend cycles, and increasingly uniform ideas of what “good” tattooing looks like. After decades working within changing tattoo scenes, I’ve watched stylistic monocultures rise and…

Make Art Not Content: Tattooing Beyond the Algorithm Social media has fundamentally changed how tattooing is seen, shared, and judged. In an era driven by algorithms and performance metrics, many artists are beginning to question whether tattooing is becoming content…

Gatekeeping, Standards & the Future of Tattooing Debates around tattoo industry gatekeeping, education, and professional standards have intensified in recent years. As a working tattoo artist, questions around standards and training directly affect how the craft evolves and how clients…

Is Tattooing Dying? Why Every Era Thinks Tattooing Is Ending Claims that tattooing is dying appear in every generation, usually during periods of economic or cultural change. After nearly two decades working through multiple industry shifts, I’ve watched the same…