A Philosophy of Art for the Digital Age

Today, being a “starving artist” is so passé …

You already know the Internet has the potential to put your creations in front of a much wider audience than you’d have at an art show at your local coffee shop.

But, this week, photographer Bryan Formhals and I talk about the lesser-known benefits of living the life of an artist online that are essential to having a fulfilling creative career.

In this 36-minute episode, Bryan Formhals and I discuss:

  • Why you must be intentional about the content you publish online
  • The difference between a curator and an editor
  • How Bryan’s blog evolved into a print magazine and then a podcast
  • Why Bryan loves copy editors
  • The benefits of collaboration
  • What improv can teach you about consistently writing strong content
  • Why it’s important to find and connect with the “right people”
  • The value of a small audience
  • The definition of art

The Show Notes

A Philosophy of Art for the Digital Age

Voiceover: This is Rainmaker.FM, the digital marketing podcast network. It’s built on the Rainmaker Platform, which empowers you to build your own digital marketing and sales platform. Start your free 14-day trial at RainmakerPlatform.com.

Stefanie Flaxman: Hello there, Editor-in-Chiefs. I am Stefanie Flaxman, and you are listening to Editor-in-Chief, the weekly audio broadcast that delivers the art of writing, updated for the digital age to help you become a stronger media producer.

I’ve talked a little bit in past weeks — little snippets here and there — about philosophy of art. You’ve heard a bit of my views on the subject, but I wanted to bring in someone who is an artist creating media in the digital space and online to get a different perspective of what it means to be an artist in the digital age.

On today’s episode, I’m going to share with you my conversation with Bryan Formhals, who is a photographer. He’s also a podcaster and an author, and he’s going to talk about all of the cool stuff that he’s doing for the audience that he’s built, and a lot of it is online. Here is my conversation with Bryan Formhals.

Hey, Bryan. Thank you for joining me today.

Bryan Formhals: Hey Stefanie, thanks for having me.

Stefanie Flaxman: I’m really interested in something that we were actually talking about before we started recording. I liked our conversation, so I wanted to jump right in so we can get it on tape — or digital, whatever.

I wanted to talk to you today because I consider you an Editor-in-Chief. What was interesting was that you were saying that you had listened to the first episode of Editor-in-Chief, and you identified with it, and that’s how you thought of yourself as well.

Why You Must Be Intentional about the Content You Publish Online

Bryan Formhals: Yeah, absolutely. I’ve always thought of myself as an editor. I have a Tumblr called Photographs on the Brain, and I’ve done a lot of stuff sharing photography, and people would always say, “Oh, you’re a curator of photography.”

I’m like, “No! I consider myself an editor,” and I take that seriously. I take editors very seriously, too. I think that’s an incredibly important job. In terms of an outlook on the way content goes out into the web, I definitely can tell the people that are editors and that think that way.

It’s always been something that I’ve identified with internally. For a long time, I’ve always wanted to be an Editor-in-Chief in some regard or another. How we define that these days, there’s a million different ways to say things that people do with content on the web, but I really like that term and idea of the Editor-in-Chief. It means that you are ultimately the decider of what goes out and what has relevance for you.

Stefanie Flaxman: Right. We talk about content shock a lot. That idea comes up. At some point when everybody is producing content online, you really have to be intentional with what you distribute. What do you think is a difference between an editor and a curator, since you made that little distinction there?

The Difference between a Curator and an Editor

Bryan Formhals: I don’t mind when people say they’re curating their lifestyle and things like that. I think language evolves, and I’m not too uptight about looking down on people that way. Again, it’s another respect for what real curators in museums do, which is an incredibly difficult job and requires a lot of education. They’re making more choices besides just stuff that they like.

A lot of times I feel, essentially, when people are curating on the web, like, “Here’s stuff I like,” which is great to share, and I’m all for that. But I don’t really think you’re doing anything else. To me, a curator, too, I keep it more in that revered, professional kind of skill. Whereas for you as an editor it’s that I’m a media person. And editors are all part of that big media stew, and they’re an important, integral aspect of how stuff gets out to your audience — the public, your marketing audience, or your art audience, whoever it may be.

Editors are the people that have that judgment in terms of what type of news or content is going to be relevant for your specific audience and making those decisions — yes or no. “This photo or … no, not that photo.” Somebody has to make that ultimate choice, and that’s the editor’s job.

Stefanie Flaxman: Right, it’s the specific lens through which that message is delivered. It stops with the Editor-in-Chief or whatever you want to call it.

You do a lot of different stuff. You have a podcast, and you have book that you co-authored, and you are street photographer, last I checked or we talked. I haven’t seen you for a couple years.

I’d love to hear about some of the stuff you’re doing and how that all came about.

Bryan Formhals: Sure. We can go all the way back to when I graduated out college. I studied journalism and communication. I didn’t really want to go work for a small-town newspaper, so I decided I was going to more into the corporate world. I ended up working on the Internet, doing things with Internet monitoring. My jobs have always revolved around the Internet and media and marketing to some degree.

I grew up with blogs too, and I was always interested in the way blogs were transforming the media landscape. I was jumping on that right away. Come 2007, when social media started erupting, I was like, “Listen, I want to work on the Internet. If I’m going to do it, I think I have to go try to build my own brand and prove that I can do it.”

How Bryan’s Blog Evolved into a Print Magazine and Then a Podcast

Bryan Formhals: I started a website called LPV, La Pura Vida, which basically where I would edit and share photography that I was finding on Flickr, because I was a big member of the Flickr community. That’s where I started. I started out as a photography blogger and evolved the blog into a magazine, LPV Magazine. I jumped on Twitter right away. In 2007, I built a pretty large following with LPV.

In 2014 or something, TIME named it one of the best art Twitter feeds. I got a little bit of recognition for what I was doing with LPV. We published seven magazines, which I was really excited about. At the time, I started to see a lot of other people doing magazines. I get really anxious and don’t want to do whatever everyone else is doing. I took a little bit off. I’ve done the podcast for a season. I was happy with it, but from a technical perspective, it wasn’t so great.

I started working with my buddy Tom, and last fall, we started doing Season 2. The LPV Show essentially has me talking to photographers about their processes and photo books. It’s a small niche. The photo book culture is booming. It’s nice. It’s not something that’s going to attract a huge audience. It’s something that I really enjoy. I love talking to artists. I love getting into their influences, their inspirations, how they work, how they come up with their ideas. Right now, for me, the photo book is the thing I’m focused on, what I’m most passionate about. It brings all that stuff together.

I’m on vacation this week. I do have a day job. If you look me up, you’ll be able to find it. I do work in content marketing as well for a rather large photography brand.

Basically, I exist in this photography Internet world in many different ways. I’ve been involved with that for going on seven or eight years now. That’s probably what I am first. Obviously, I do love photography and I’m out working on my projects. I have no delusions of that I’ll ever be a professional photographer or show in galleries or things like that. I really do it as my love for photography and art and how important that is to me, my personal growth, and who I am as a person. I couldn’t possibly imagine not making photographs or trying to make art. It really balances everything out for me. I try to keep busy. I’m having no problems doing that these days.

Stefanie Flaxman: Good. That’s good. It’s a part of you, so there’s no reason to stifle it, or at least that is what you discovered, it sounds like.

Bryan Formhals: Yeah, absolutely. It’s such a cliché. You hear it a million times. “If you’re doing what you love, you’re never working.” I’ve gotten that synergy in the last couple of years where my day jobs keeps me challenged. I love it, and I love what I’m doing, and it revolves around photography, so I’m right there.

Then when I’m off the clock, I’m hanging out with amazing photographers and artists and talking to them, or pursuing my own stuff. I like being busy, and I like having a lot of things to do. I know for some people, multi-tasking can be difficult, but for me, that’s my brain. You don’t understand.

Stefanie Flaxman: You have to be all over the place in lots of different places.

Why Bryan Loves Copy Editors

Bryan Formhals: Yeah. Obviously, there’s some drawbacks to it. When we were talking about editors before, I forgot to mention that the people I respect most are copy editors. You mentioned the book I co-published, that’s called Photographers’ Sketchbooks. In that book, me and co-author Stephen McLaren basically looked at the processes of 43 contemporary photographers and how they develop their project.

Working with a copy editor on that blew my mind. Writing, for me, is very difficult. I’d put in the copy and send it to the copy editor. I was like, “Oh man, I’m so embarrassed.” After she went through it, I was like, “Man, I sound pretty good. I could be a real writer if I actually work with the copy editor and didn’t just post or publish on Tumblr or WordPress.” Obviously, we worked together as editors way back when. Copy editors, to me — there’s something amazing.

Stefanie Flaxman: It’s a good collaboration, and I bet that copy editor has a lot of satisfaction that she helped you produce something that was your true vision of what you wanted to release.

Bryan Formhals: Yeah, absolutely. She would constantly be saying that without the writers, there would be nothing there. She has that admiration for writers and for language. It’s such a learning process, the things that they point out of the way you write and some things that you might say over and over again, or different ways of phrasing. Man, it made me feel good about my writing. I wish I could have that copy editor with me all the time. Attention to detail is not my strong suit, so I’m even more impressed by what they do.

Stefanie Flaxman: Okay, Photographers’ Sketchbooks. It sounds like you collaborate a lot, because you have a collaboration going on with the podcast. The book that you co-authored involved a lot of other photographers. You want to get in the mind of the artist.

The Benefits of Collaboration

Bryan Formhals: Yeah, absolutely. Collaboration to me, it’s something I’m always thinking about. It’s something I always want to challenge myself on, because it’s incredibly difficult. I’ve had collaborations go sour. They blow up, or it doesn’t work out. You learn that that’s part of the deal when you’re dealing with artists and photographers. It doesn’t work. Why does the band break up after their one-hit album? Now I see it from the inside.

I like the challenge. I like the challenge of seeing how other people think and how your ideas and their ideas can coalesce and mix and turn into something new. When I’m doing the podcast, the moment I know it’s really working is when me and the person I’m interviewing get in that headspace where we’re sharing ideas and we’re developing it together. To me, that’s so incredibly fun.

It goes back to when I did improv comedy when I lived in Minneapolis in the early 2000s.That was the most creatively fulfilling time of anything that I’ve ever done because working with five people in that headspace was amazing. Something I’ve always tried to do in everything that I’m doing is to work closely with people and artists, and develop big ideas. It’s what I do, I guess.

What Improv Can Teach You about Consistently Writing Strong Content

Stefanie Flaxman: That’s funny that you mentioned improv. I’ve been thinking of improv a lot lately, because I think it’s such an important skill to have. Podcasting is still somewhat new to me, so I was thinking, “Man, those skills … if you can really sharpen them, then you’re on it. You’re prepared for anything.” It’s funny that you mentioned it.

We met about 10 years ago. Your roommate did improv too. This memory just came back to me. Right? Who was that? You don’t have to say his name.

Bryan Formhals: Yeah. What was his name? Carl, maybe? No, I can’t remember the name.

Stefanie Flaxman: Okay. We don’t need to reveal exactly who he was.

Bryan Formhals: It’s just because I’m old. I forget everyone’s names. I’m terrible with names, awful. It was Phil. We moved from Minneapolis together. He did improv.

It is an amazing skill. It’s difficult to describe. One of the important things is listening, too. You have to be listening constantly. The key phrase in improv is “Yes and.” I believe I read this. You know you’ve used “Yes and” before, where it’s like you accept what your partner says and you try to build on it. It’s one of those fundamental aspects of any sort of creative collaboration that you can apply to anything.

Stefanie Flaxman: Right. It’s such a widespread tip, because it could also be the same in writing. I was thinking of screenplays, but also in content writing. From the headlines to the first paragraph, everything has to push the story forward in some way that holds the audience’s attention and is engaging. I think there’s a cool writing tip in there.

Definitely with improv, I always think that you have to go with it. There can’t be someone who’s like “We’re at a dentist’s office,” and the other person is like, “No, we’re at my mother-in-law’s 70th birthday party.”

Bryan Formhals: Exactly. It’s such a painful lesson when that starts happening and the teachers stop you, and it’s like, “No, no, no.” I was terrible at improv, too, though, but it’s something I’m glad I did for my own creativity.

Even when I’m out taking pictures, I roam around. I go wherever the impulse takes me. I use improv in almost everything. Even in terms of content marketing, what’s going on the web is that you have to almost have that improvisational mindset, because the ground is shifting beneath us so often. I’ve seen those shifts happen so quickly. If you don’t have the ability to synthesize what’s going on and react quickly, I don’t know how you’re going to survive in this environment. There are so many reasons to take that mindset.

Another big thing with that, too, is releasing that fear. You’re going to screw up, you’re going to probably be wrong, but you’ve just got to bury that fear, because everyone, deep down, has it in terms of marketing and advertising and all content. You never know. It’s “yes and” and “embrace your fear.”

Stefanie Flaxman: I talk about preparing, not planning, for an editorial calendar. I have an episode of Editor-in-Chief that I did about that, where you have to be looking at the big picture, but you have to adapt and stay flexible. It’s just with adapting and staying flexible. For me, photography or street photography, like you said, when you’re wandering around, seems like a bit of a solitary activity. You found a way to involve yourself with other artists, and you enjoy doing that, and you want to do that. It sounds like something that has also pushed you forward in terms of what you do creatively.

Why It’s Important to Find and Connect with the “Right People”

Stefanie Flaxman: I was thinking of photography as a very — I don’t know, isolating — something you do on your own, equating that to how I am with writing and editing.

I don’t think I’ve thanked you enough for the last time I saw you, which was about two years ago. I had been working on my own for a while. I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do next. You had a photography exhibit in Los Angeles that you were in town for. I was talking about it. I was like, “I don’t know. I’ve been doing revision theory for a while. I’m just stunted in terms of what I can do on my own.” I was in pretty rough shape then. You said, and I think almost exactly, you said, “You just got to get in with the right people.”

Bryan Formhals: Oh no.

Stefanie Flaxman: Really, something just like that. About a year later, I started working for Copyblogger. I thought you were right. It was very encouraging. I felt a lot of support from you in that moment. Do you remember what I’m talking about?

Bryan Formhals: Yeah, absolutely. I’ve been following what you’ve been doing on the web and following along. It’s like, “Oh, this is so natural. She’s so good at that.” That’s how you can mix in.

I also understood the struggles. I freelanced when I first got to New York, and it was really painful. I was not a very good freelancer. Some people have that in them, and I don’t. What came from that was the people that I met through the web. It’s amazing. Almost every opportunity I’ve got in my career from art has been through the Internet.

To me, it’s always finding your tribe. This is one of those really old tropes from content marketing, too — building your tribe and finding your people. I think having this assertiveness to reach out and say “Yes, I want to be a part of this,” is very important. Sometimes it doesn’t always work out, but a lot of times, if you take the risk, you’ll see that it happens.

I guess you could call it shameless networking, but I don’t see it that way. To me, I’m always just trying to find people that share my passions. I don’t always necessarily have to agree with them 100 percent, but I want them to be able to challenge me and take me to a different place. It’s always “get in with the right people, man.”

Stefanie Flaxman: I didn’t know what that meant for me at that time, but I knew exactly what you were talking about. One of my struggles was that I was doing everything by myself. I felt overwhelmed by that and, again, that I wasn’t moving forward. I did a lot of stuff that I was proud of by myself, but you reach a point where you’re like, “I can’t do anything that I’m really going to be proud of next by myself.”

I started thinking about, “What does that mean? For me, who are these right people?” I’d been a member of the Copyblogger audience for a while. We don’t need to get in that little story about how that happened, how I came on board here, but it changed a lot of things. It was exactly what I was looking for.

I really admire what you have done to find the balance between doing your own thing because you’re very self-directed. You know what you want to produce. You want execute on your vision, but then also understanding the value of incorporating people and audience.

Bryan Formhals: Hey, you know what? I think about audience a lot. I actually have people who ask me about it. Sometimes they’re stupefied of what I say. For the LPV stuff and on my photography, I don’t necessarily always understand my audience. I don’t know that I necessarily want to.

I work a lot as, “we are them.” It’s a ‘we.’ If you can stay true to who you are and put that out, you are the person listening to what you’re doing. Part of that is I’d always try to stay true to my intuition and say, “Yes, this is the kind of stuff that I’m really interested in,” and then hopefully there are people who are attracted to that.

In terms of, do I necessarily know exactly who they are on the photography level? I don’t. Sometimes it’s interesting who comes out of the woodwork and says, “We love the podcast. We have been following your Tumblr for years now and get lost in the black hole forever.” How would you even know? I can look at the raw numbers of who’s followed me on Twitter, but I don’t know if I can ever really know who they are. I assume that they’re attracted to what I’m doing, because of what I’ve done, otherwise they wouldn’t be there. It’s an interesting dynamic, trying to think about audience and your relationship to an audience.

Stefanie Flaxman: You want to attract the right audience. You don’t want everyone, and you obviously shouldn’t try to please everyone with your content or what you’re producing. Like you said, the more you are yourself and you become the type of audience member, you are your audience member. You are who you’d want attract. Right?

The Value of a Small Audience

Bryan Formhals: Yeah. That’s 100 percent it. My friend Paul Kwiatkowski, he was just on my podcast, and he was talking about how he wanted to write the book that he really wanted to read. That’s what got him over his writer’s block. He was trying to be a different type of writer who would appeal to this broader literary crowd. He’s like, “No. That’s not the book I actually want to read.” He wrote the book he wanted to read understanding that if he’s like that, there must be other people that way, too. I definitely agree.

Even my podcast, it’s a small little podcast, and I’m totally happy with that. We’ve talked about things we could do to try to build a bigger audience, and I pushed back against it. I’m like, “I don’t know that I want a bigger audience.” Like you said, I want the people that are really into what we’re doing and who will sit and listen to an hour-long rambling conversation between two photographers. I think getting the right core people is the way to go.

On a personal level, trying to scale something, I’ve learned, is incredibly difficult. You can get to a certain level. After a while, you really need tons of resources to push something through. We see all these big success stories of blogs. I think those overnight breakthroughs in terms of podcast and blogs, that’s becoming incredibly difficult to do these days.

I always try to stay humble or stay satisfied with my little audience. I’m just thankful anyone will listen to it and give us the time of day.

Stefanie Flaxman: Yeah. Scaling and staying true to what your original ideas were, that’s a big challenge, too. I was going to ask you something that was very interesting about the people who listened to you — your friend who wrote the book.

Bryan Formhals: Right.

The Definition of Art

Stefanie Flaxman: I hear so many writers say that. I have a philosophy of art book where I talk about tattoos. It was the same thing for me, because I was familiar with a lot of books about tattoos that were more about people’s personal reasons for getting tattoos and things like that, but that’s not the book that I wanted to read. I wanted to read more of a philosophy of art take on “what is art?” If we call something art, what is it, and what isn’t it? How do you define art? I wanted to explore that through tattoos, a visual form of expression, if you want to say expression. That’s what I did there. I can totally relate. Do you have a definition of art?

Bryan Formhals: Do I have a definition of art? I guess at its core level, it’s human expression of our existing time. When you study art, you get to that point where it’s, “Yes, everything can be art.” I guess I stick more to “it is something that is created with the intent of moving someone emotionally, intellectually, or aesthetically with something that’s created, whether it be music, visual, what have you.”

I definitely think there’s room for everyone to be an artist. I believe in that, that everyone should embrace that side. I believe everyone does have that artistic impulse. I think it’s healthy for everyone to push it. But I’m also a little bit of a snob. I like really good artists who think deeply about this stuff, and they can execute it on a different level than me just wandering out and taking photographs.

Maybe this sounds like I’m being too dogmatic about authority, but I do respect people that put in the time, who really dedicate themselves to the discipline of photography, or art. I’m not saying you need a certain pedigree to do it. Obviously, anyone can come up and amaze us.

Maybe this isn’t the best analogy, but I would say they’re addicts and obsessives. I know my people when they are addicted to their art and they’re obsessed with it. That’s maybe an uncomfortable analogy, but to me it really is. The people that are just deep into photography or art, they’re just crazy obsessed with it, and it’s almost like an addiction. Of all the things to be addicted to, I think creating art is probably one of the better ones.

Stefanie Flaxman: Right. How can you argue with that? It’s a tough question. I think that’s why the question fascinates me so much, because it’s three simple words: “What is art?” It’s really complex. I agree with what you said.

I would tie it back into audience again. I’m really big in the audience’s role in a piece of art. I think the audience’s role is almost bigger than the creator’s role. Once the creator releases it into the world, it takes on a life of its own that the creator couldn’t have imagined.

For me, having that interaction and having that audience to receive the work is a big part of art. Everyone interprets art or some form of art based on their own worldviews. To me, that’s a critical component. Probably creators or artists don’t like to hear that. I’d have to be outside myself and see how I react to me saying that.

Bryan Formhals: No. It’s a great observation, absolutely. Again, we all consume art too, whether it’s TV or a movie we go to, and try to understand how important it is to you in the audience too. There isn’t any artist alive who also isn’t a fan of art themselves, too, because it’s impossible to exist in that bubble.

It’s something I struggle with, too, fully understanding why something resonates with me. It’s why I can’t be a critic. People push me in a way, like, “Maybe you should review books and things.” I’m like, “I’m not so good at telling you exactly why a book, or a TV show appeals to me.”

That’s something I’ve been trying to work on the last couple of years, really digging in to the nitty-gritty of what impacts me as a member of the audience, whether it’s photo books, or it’s TV, or what have you. I ask myself, “Why are you into that, man? What’s going on there?” Sometimes it gets uncomfortable. It’s like, “Why are you obsessed with these kind of TV shows or this type of art? What is it about that?” I think you have to ask those questions of yourself if you want to grow.

Stefanie Flaxman: Yeah. It’s very fluid. You’re producing art for someone else to interpret, and you’re also interpreting other people’s work and being inspired by it, or maybe not so into it, but that’s your reaction based on your mindset, your worldview. It’s an interesting process.

Bryan Formhals: That’s one of the reasons I love the web, too, the network effects, how we’re getting all of this information — on Tumblr, too. I’m big on Tumblr. I just love the crazy, weird flow that happens to my dashboard, or just seeing all these different glimpses and ideas.

There are smarter people than me writing about network effects and how all that is impacting culture. You can get into the social justice movement and that sort of thing, too. There’s a lot going on these days. I feel bad that I can’t keep up on everything. Maybe that’s just my mad, delusional Internet mind again: “I can conquer it all!” You really can’t. You’ve got to stay in your lane, as they say.

Stefanie Flaxman: Yeah, if you want to stay sane. I’ll rhyme it. What did you say? “Stay in your lane,” and then if I added, “If you want to stay sane.”

Bryan Formhals: Exactly, there you go.

Stefanie Flaxman: I like rhymes. Rhymes are fun.

Bryan Formhals: It sounds like a book you could write.

Stefanie Flaxman: Sounds like a book. Okay. I’m going to have to write that down. I may have to expand on that idea.

Bryan Formhals: Maybe you could put out a challenge or anything.

Stefanie Flaxman: I know. I don’t have to take everything as a challenge. I was going to tie all that back into online too, with your opportunities to have an audience and get your work out there and to be an observer and to be inspired. It’s a pretty cool world we live in.

Bryan Formhals: We live in interesting times.

Stefanie Flaxman: We live in interesting times.

Bryan Formhals: That was the phrase? Yeah. “We live in interesting times,” or “we think we live in interesting times.”

Stefanie Flaxman: “Be thankful you live in interesting times.” Yes, that helps sum up the Internet for me. This was awesome. I want you to tell everyone where we can find you online.

Bryan Formhals: Sure. Twitter, it’s @BryanFormhals. My main photography blog is an aggregation blog. It’s called Photographs on the Brain, a lot of quotes from articles and images that I like, books I like. Then the podcast is LPVshow.com. We have a blog there too: Blog.LPVshow.com. We do behind-the-scenes photos. We share the photo books right on the blog that we discuss, and then work from the photographers that we’re interviewing.

Once you get to those places, you’ll find all their tentacles to the Instagram, or Facebook, and all that stuff. It’s really hard to pitch all that these days, isn’t it?

Stefanie Flaxman: If there’s a lot to pitch. Well I will put all of that in the show notes that I have in the blog post that will go along with this episode, so it’ll be easy for people to find it there.

I wanted to add one more thing about your podcast that you told me about earlier. You record your interviews in person, so you get a cool New York vibe with chaos in the background. Is that just where you’re going for?

Bryan Formhals: We do it at my buddy’s place in Bushwick. We’ve had the pizza man deliver in the middle of the podcast. We’ve had trumpets playing from the apartment next door and dogs barking and roommates coming in. It is very chaotic. If you know Bushwick, Brooklyn, that’s the mecca of hipsterdom these days. It’s a very interesting neighborhood.

I really like incorporating that New York element to it. Tom and I say that we’re taking a photograph of a conversation. We’re trying to capture that moment of what’s going on. It’s been interesting. I actually don’t listen to my podcast, so maybe people get annoyed with that. That’s another story.

Stefanie Flaxman: I like the raw and authentic vibe. Things don’t always have to be so polished. That’s not what a copy editor should be saying, but I will take myself out of my copy editor role for a moment. Just artistically, I like the raw and unpolished sometimes.

Bryan Formhals: That actually ties back into our audience, because I know my audience would be into it. If I was trying to reach someone else, that would maybe take a different approach to it, but I know my people, I think.

Stefanie Flaxman: That’s good. Know your people. Thank you so much, Bryan, for talking to me. I appreciate it. Bye.

Bryan Formhals: Bye.

Stefanie Flaxman: If you are an artist who creates digital media online, you may want to check out the Rainmaker Platform. Editor-in-Chief is brought to you by the Rainmaker Platform, the complete website solution for content marketers and online entrepreneurs. Find out more and take a free 14-day test drive at Rainmaker.FM/platform.

I hope you will join me next week for the next episode of Editor-in-Chief. You can catch all my episodes on EditorinChief.FM.

If you’d like to leave a rating or review of the show, you can do that on iTunes. I would very much appreciate it. I’m Stefanie Flaxman. Thank you for listening to Editor-in-Chief. Now, go become one.