Human Made Is the New Luxury, and your art already is.

I saw this post from @jadeagard.design this week about human made being the new luxury, and I have not stopped thinking about it.

If you make art, this is good news for you.

Making art is good for you

Before we get to the business side, it is worth saying this. Making art is good for us.

Research on art making has linked it to lower stress, in a similar way to meditation. It can lift your mood. It can pull you into a flow state, where an hour disappears and your brain gets a rest from everything else. It can help you work through feelings that are hard to put into words. It can build your self-esteem and confidence. It keeps your imagination and thinking sharp, and for kids, it builds fine motor skills.

It is also one of the best screen-free things we can do. Some of my favourite moments are sitting at the table with my kids, all of us drawing our own thing. No one is on a screen. Everyone is making something and focus on their artwork in a really fun way.

So even before you sell a single design, the time you spend making art is not wasted time.

Human made is now a selling point

Here is where it gets interesting for those of us who earn from our art.

I am seeing more and more people who want to know a real person made the design on the product they are buying. They do not want the strange, slightly off AI designs that keep popping up. (Have you seen the reel about the terrible heirloom Christmas rug that looked pretty in the adverts but the actual design is so badly AI it’s not even pretending to be half decent - watch it here).

I am also seeing more brands look for art made by real artists, with no AI clauses in their contracts.

That means the thing you already do, making the art yourself, is now part of the value. It is not a detail to hide. It is the selling point.

You do not need to paint by hand for it to count

This part matters. Human made does not mean you have to switch to paint and paper. If you draw in Procreate or build your repeats in Illustrator, your work is still human made. Every line, colour choice and layout decision came from you.

What makes it human is the thinking. The idea, the sketch, the choices you made along the way, and the ones you threw out.

Show the mess

The easiest way to show your work is human made is to show how it was made. You do not need a polished behind-the-scenes video. You can share:

• the first rough sketch, wobbly lines and all

• colour tests that did not work

• a design you scrapped, and why

• the time-lapse from Procreate (it records one for you)

• the finished pattern

Mistakes and all. People connect with the process, often more than the final piece. It shows the value of your thinking from idea to finished design, and that is something a prompt cannot give you.

Where to share it

Instagram is the obvious place. Pinterest works too. A pin with your sketch next to the finished pattern tells the whole story in one image. Pinterest is full of brands searching for designs for their products

And when you pitch to brands, add a line about how you work. Something like "every design starts as a hand-drawn sketch", if that is true for you. It is a small line, and it gives the art director a reason to connect with you, not only your designs.

If you want your process pins in front of more brands, my free Pinterest guide walks you through the basics!

Where to start

You do not need a new body of work for this. Next time you sit down to make something, take a photo of the first sketch. That is it. You have your first process post.

Your art is human made. That is the luxury. Let people see it.