I finally deleted my artist website and moved everything to a simple PDF

I spent years tweaking my website. Better photos, cleaner navigation, more process shots, less process shots, SEO keywords my friend who works in tech kept telling me to use. And I'd get maybe three inquiries a month, usually from students asking about internships I don't offer.

Two months ago my domain expired and I just... didn't renew it. Put together a single PDF with recent work, editions, prices in a table, and my email at the bottom. It's ugly. It's just a document.

I send it to people who DM me or write. That's it.

And somehow this feels more honest? Like the website was performing professionalism for nobody in particular, and the PDF is just me handing someone what they asked for. I've sold more prints in the last eight weeks than in the previous six months of having a proper site.

I don't know if this scales or if it only works because I'm a printmaker with edition sizes I can count on one hand. But I'm starting to think the whole "you need a professional web presence" thing was built for a different kind of practice, or maybe a different decade.

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Lukas Brandt·4w

I get this. Not the same thing exactly, but I had years of a polished website, carefully curated, the right installation shots, the whole thing. And it always felt like I was showing the work to nobody in particular. A kind of performance with no room.

A PDF you send to someone who actually asked to see it, that's a conversation. The website is a broadcast. There's a difference.

And honestly, I think the work reads differently when it comes through something direct like that. Less context, less curation, just here it is. The ugliness might be part of why it works.

Giulia BrunoOP·4w

Exactly. The performance-with-no-room thing, that's it exactly. You're putting all this energy into a presentation nobody asked to see, and you're the only one who knows how much work went into the staging.

And yeah, the ugliness. I keep coming back to that. A PDF that looks like somebody just made it, it doesn't pretend to be anything other than what it is. There's no veneer. The work just sits there. I think that's closer to how art actually functions in a studio visit anyway, you flip through a folder, you don't get a cinematic experience.

Roman Petrak·4w

I get why that feels more honest. A website is a performance. A PDF is just handing someone the work.

The thing nobody says is that most artist websites exist for other artists to look at, not for buyers. Buyers come through a referral or an Instagram message or they saw your piece somewhere. They don't land on your site through SEO and browse your process shots. They want to know what you've got, what it costs, and how to get it. A PDF does that.

I don't have a website either. Never did. If someone wants to see what I do I send them photos on the phone. Hasn't hurt anything.

Giulia BrunoOP·4w

You said it. The audience for the website was other artists, I think I knew that and just didn't want to admit it. All that time I was making something for people who'd judge the installation shots, not people who'd buy the work.

The PDF thing works because it's transactional in the right way. Here's what exists, here's what it costs, here's my email. No pretence that I'm a brand. And honestly the ugliness of it is part of the point, it feels like proof that I'm not selling anything except the work.