Welcome to the 15th Nonstndrd newsletter! Time flies when you are having fun and this project has brought me a lot of joy so far. Many of you date back to the soft launch on Substack in late 2024 so I want to say that I appreciate you sticking with me across platforms. This installment of the newsletter (and future entries) will be a little be different from the previous ones. The biggest change is the title, it is now called "The Nonstndrd Process". I’m going to start incorporating my thoughts about my relationship technology as an artist and this new branding is a reflection of that. All projects evolve over time and this one is no exception. I look forward to continuing this journey and hope y'all stick with me as it grows.

How I Got Over

In the past two years, beginning with the collapse of Twitter as a viable platform for non MAGA creatives, I’ve been reexamining my relationship with tech and my art.

I have seen a lot of my peers and artists in general struggling to navigate the constantly shifting social media landscape that we all became so dependent on in the past decade. I’m not saying that I have figured it out, but I’m confident that I’ve been able to stabilize my practice while insulating it from the forces that make it so hard for artists to make a living these days.

At the height of the social media age, we were all encouraged to go all in on leveraging these platforms. I'm a holdover from the blog era and back then, the pressure to ditch your portfolio websites was intense. There is an entire generation of creatives, from photographers to designers and everything in between, that came up in a time when the only goal was a large social media following. Art directors and editors scoured these platforms in search of talent to hire, creating a world where one tweet or post seen by the right person could change your life almost overnight. Unfortunately, this era was not meant to last and we were unprepared for what followed.

Slowly but surely, social media platforms began introducing subtle changes to make their businesses more profitable at the expense of discoverability. The impact of those decisions over time, along with the advancement of machine learning and AI, has destroyed the viability of the platforms as a pseudo creative portfolio. If you are an artist, designer, or photographer starting out today, there is no way to find success depending solely on an Instagram/X/Threads/ or Bluesky profile. You're going to have to do more...

Going forward, the "more" is what I plan on exploring in depth with this newsletter. The Nonstndrd Process is focused on art, process, and navigating the ever changing technology landscape that has become a critical element in any successful creative practice.

Last, but not least at all, I wanted to share the latest addition to the Iconography series of collage illustrations that I've been creating. Dedicated to the late Cesar Chavez, his legacy and belief in true solidarity has long been an inspiration to me.