Here’s the long story short… I’m starting a new subscription based illustration service called Sketch Foundry! I’d love to hear your feedback and, if you want to help me out, I’ve also launched it on Product Hunt so you can go throw some upvotes my way over there. Thank you so much for the support!
Here’s the long story, uh… long…
What’s the saying? “Life is what happens while you’re busy making plans.” Something like that. Over the past bunch of years, I’ve been making a lot of plans. I’m sure everyone can relate to some degree, but it’s way easier to plan to do a thing than it is to actually do the thing. We make all kinds of reasons and excuses why it’s never the right time. For me, I would even get the stage where I’d create something (this newsletter is a prime example). But I never fully committed because I told myself that I needed to focus on things that actually paid the bills. I’ve been working as a designer and front-end web developer for years, while I continued the hobby.
But sometimes life knows what we need better than we do.
If you’ve been following along you already know that a couple months ago I was laid off from my ‘day job’. It wasn’t the first time I’ve gone through this, so it wasn’t that big of a deal. We actually built up our savings to the point where we weren’t worried about it. The thing I didn’t realize was how bad the job market is for people who do what I was doing. Like, really bad. The tech industry was in a bubble. Tons of investors dumping money into unprofitable companies hoping for a big payoff. I guess that’s the way things have worked for a while. But now, with inflation and the economy where it is, companies have to, you know, make money. The amount of layoffs I’ve seen in the past couple months have been crazy.
And so, the job search began.
I didn’t really expect it to be a quick process, but after sending out a ton of resumes and applications with not much to show for it other than a lot of rejection emails, this feels very different than what I’ve gone through in the past. It’s weird out there.
But in the weirdness, there’s opportunity.
I’ve been talking about doing this for years. As much as I liked my job, UX design and writing code, my heart has always been in drawing. So it seems the universe is telling me that it’s time to make a change, let’s see where it goes!
So what is Sketch Foundry?
I’m glad you asked! Sketch Foundry is a subscription based illustration service. I’ll work directly with you to make custom illustrations for all of your projects.
Editorial illustrations for websites, magazines, or newsletters
Character designs
Infographics
Cover artwork
Illustrated icons
Illustrated maps
Mascots
Custom avatars
Persona images
Promotional or marketing graphics
Sequential art
The subscription model means you can pay one monthly fee for as many illustrations as I can get done in a month. That number varies based on a number of factors… the complexity of the request, the amount of revisions, etc. It also provides flexibility. If you only have a few requests at the moment, you can pause your subscription which means any days left in the month will be there when you have more work and resume your subscription. You won’t be charged until those days are used up.
That’s the model in a nutshell. I’ll keep you updated with the progress here in this newsletter, but I’ll still be making comics as well (it’s an addiction at this point).
I really appreciate the feedback and support! I’ll be back with a new comic next week!
Thanks for reading. Have a great week!
-Brad