Explore James's work: jamescookartworkshop.com | IG: jamescookartwork
[Watch the full interview below]
James Cook never set out to become a typewriter artist. What began as a college project in 2014, inspired by an artist he discovered while researching technology and art, eventually became a distinctive creative practice and a full-time career. Using letters, numbers, and punctuation marks, James creates intricate drawings by physically typing each mark onto a page.
But building a career around the medium has required more than artistic skill. From navigating commissions and limited-edition prints to embracing video content and experimenting with projects outside his usual subject matter, James has learned how to create opportunities rather than wait for them to arrive.
In our conversation, we discuss the business decisions behind his practice, why artists should think carefully about the rights to their work, how social media can make their work discoverable, and why pursuing a creative idea without knowing where it will lead can sometimes open the biggest doors.
When did your creative journey begin?
Typewriter art started as a college project back in 2014. I was probably about 17 years old, and I had been studying art because it was one of the subjects I needed in order to qualify for architecture as a degree at university.
I decided to take on this school project based around technology influencing art and looking at artists out there who had used technology in interesting ways. It wasn't too long before I randomly came across an obituary for an artist called Paul Smith, who was very famously known for creating drawings with typewriters.
It was his backstory that really fascinated me, even more than what he was creating, although the drawings were amazing.
Paul Smith was born with cerebral palsy, and at a very early age his parents gave him a typewriter. Because of his condition, he wasn't able to hold conventional writing tools like a pencil or a pen, and they wanted him to learn to read and write.
But what they didn't realize was that their child had this passion to produce art, and at the time he didn't have a means of doing it. So he ended up using the typewriter as a form of artistic communication.
I was fascinated by his work and thought, well, I need to give this a go for myself, just for this college project. I'll probably do two or three drawings, case closed, and move on to something else, with my career goals being to become an architect.
I didn't have a typewriter, so I went around lots of secondhand antique stores and charity shops looking for one, without any success. I remember my dad and I walking around the local town, just not finding anything.
It was only when we were having that conversation out loud on the high street that an elderly couple overheard us and said, "Oh, you just said you were looking for a typewriter. We've got one."
They gave me their address, and that afternoon we went to their house. They brought out this 1950s lime-green typewriter and wanted £15 for it, which is about $19.
I bought it, did some drawings for the school project, and thought to myself, well, I really enjoy this. It's fascinating being able to piece together drawings with letters, numbers, and punctuation marks.
From a distance, the drawings look like they've been made with fine-liner pens or pencils. But as you get closer, you start spotting all these individually typed letters on the page.
I got a kick out of it. I thought I'd quite like to do this as a hobby and keep it in the background for a while. Nobody needed to know about it, so I started posting anonymously on Instagram because I wasn't sure what reception it would get.
The business side of becoming a full-time artist didn't start until about five years ago. There was a long period where I was just experimenting and making things for the pure joy of it, without worrying about a drawing needing to make me money because I'd spent so long working on it.
What has your art taught you about seeing opportunities differently?
I think the key message is that you can't wait for permission to pursue an idea.
Sometimes you just have to create that opportunity for yourself. People will see what you've created, and you've established a precedent. They'll know what you're capable of doing and might come to you and say, "We didn't know you could do this until you showed us. Why don't you do this for us?"
That's the main thing I've learned from being a full-time artist.
I've also learned to trust my own instincts. I've found that I'm very good at disappearing for a few weeks, making something, and then returning with the finished result, rather than going to someone beforehand and explaining what I'm going to do.
I think sometimes if I explain an idea to someone before I've made it, they might talk me out of it quite easily.
You work with originals, limited editions, and commissions. How do these different revenue streams complement each other?
If someone approaches me and says, "We'd like this picture from you," I always make them aware that I'd need to be able to sell it as a limited-edition print as well.
Commissions can provide that financial security to start a project. But for me, having limited-edition prints is a way for more people to own your work.
The idea of doing one commission that takes you four weeks to make, and then that's it, there's no legacy to the work. It's kind of a shame.
With commercial projects, I normally ask if I can sell the work as a print. It's something I had to make sure of in the contract when I did the Wimbledon project. When they saw my drawing and wanted to do a video ahead of the men's finals, I had to make sure I could still sell the work as a print.
Doing a one-off doesn't normally bring in a huge amount of money. It might pay my studio rent, but if it's a month's work, you want to give yourself some options.
Sometimes a company will say they can't let you make prints because of intellectual property rights. They might offer to merchandise the work themselves, which is great because they do all the work for you.
But most of the time, it's better to do it yourself because you've already got an established audience. You don't necessarily want to send that audience somewhere else to buy something and then receive only a margin of the sale. You'd rather retain that revenue yourself.
If a commercial client says you can't make prints, then the fee needs to reflect the fact that you're giving up those potential sales.
Sometimes the fee still isn't enough, and I'll just do it because it's a project I wanted to do anyway, out of love or passion for the subject. I might have other prints selling in the background, too.
Ideally, though, I always want to build more projects where a print is available.
How do you approach limited editions?
I still do limited-edition runs, normally with a total of 500 prints. Those editions are split between different sizes. A hundred might be the small size, 75 might be slightly larger, and 50 might be a bigger one.
In rare circumstances, if a print is really popular and sells out, I might reintroduce it as a second edition a year later. But it doesn't happen that often, and I prefer to keep things as a first edition.
It's about finding a way to make the work available to more people while maintaining the value and exclusivity of the original edition.
You eventually moved to a fulfillment service. What led you to make that decision?
For the last two and a half years, I've used The Print Space to handle all the printing and posting for me.
Before that, it was me and my family doing everything ourselves. I remember the first time I posted something on social media and it unexpectedly went viral. I had a really small Big Cartel account with about five products on it.
I remember leaving work and seeing all these notifications for orders and thinking, "Oh, okay. I need to do something about this."
Literally, the living room and dining room were turned into a post office. We had postal tubes on the windowsill, and I had my mum helping to fill out customs forms.
It was unsustainable. Whenever a video went viral, we'd suddenly have this massive surge in orders, and we needed to find a solution.
The Print Space provides really high-quality, museum-grade printing. Everything, right down to the packaging, is excellent, and they also offer framing, which is something I could never do myself.
They also have facilities in different parts of the world. Originally, I'd be sending a print from the UK to an American customer, and sometimes the postage was more expensive than the print itself.
Customers would ask why the postage was so expensive, and it was because it was being sent from the UK. With The Print Space fulfilling orders in the US, customers no longer had to wait weeks for their prints, and shipping costs came down considerably.
It was a massive weight off my shoulders. They've also been really helpful with the business side. For each print drop, they help me set up website pages, including early-access pages for newsletter subscribers.
That's been useful because one problem I was running into was customers not knowing when something was going live. They'd go onto the website and find that it had already sold out.
Now, newsletter subscribers get an email telling them exactly when a print is going live, so they know when to be ready.
You've experimented with time-limited print drops, too. What have you learned about creating demand?
One strategy I've started using is making a print available for a limited time, sometimes just two weeks.
Initially, I was quite reluctant to do that. I'd think, I've spent four weeks working on this drawing, and now I'm only going to have it available for two weeks?
But it means people are more likely to buy it within that window rather than putting it off.
For example, if someone wants to buy a print as a Christmas present, they might wait until Christmas and find that it's already sold out. I'd rather they buy it earlier, and from a practical point of view, it also means I'm not trying to manage everything during the Christmas rush.
I also offer newsletter subscribers early access to new prints and originals. The idea is to give people a reason to pay attention and make sure they're aware of a release before it happens. If something is simply sitting on the website all year, people might assume they can buy it whenever they want.
These strategies give people a clearer reason to act, while also rewarding the people who follow my work closely.
What's one business decision that has had the biggest impact on your career?
Probably going from photographs to Reels.
My art account has been around since 2014. It began with me anonymously posting typewriter art when I was at college, and it's now grown to more than a million followers.
For years, the growth was quite slow. Then, in 2022, I started posting Reels, and suddenly videos were getting 100,000 views or more. Video gave my work the opportunity to reach people who didn't already follow me.
I think sometimes artists and galleries post photographs of their work, and while there's nothing wrong with that, those posts might mainly reach people who already know they exist. Video makes the work more discoverable to a wider audience.
I still see artists talking about how Instagram used to push their work and now doesn't. But I think it's worth looking at how you personally use social media, too.
When I open Instagram, I immediately start scrolling through Reels. I'm not seeing carousel posts in the same way. I'm seeing videos, and those videos are how I discover other artists.
For me, moving from mostly posting photographs to Reels made a huge difference. Since around 2019, I've posted very few carousel posts compared with the number of Reels I've published.
There are benefits and drawbacks, of course. I find that when I stop posting Reels and switch back to a carousel, engagement can drop.
But the biggest benefit is discoverability. You're casting a wider net and giving people around the world a chance to discover your work.
How do you use your newsletter alongside social media?
I think newsletters are valuable because they're a way to connect with the people who already know your work and want to learn more.
I'll sometimes include links to Instagram posts in my newsletter, so if someone has missed a new video on Instagram, they can find it directly through the email.
I'll also announce when a new video has gone live or give subscribers a preview of an upcoming project.
Another thing I like doing is giving newsletter subscribers early access to prints and originals. Sometimes I'll also offer an opportunity to win a miniature original.
I've done that with projects like Wimbledon and the US Open, where customers had the chance to win little animation frames.
I like the idea of rewarding people who continue to follow your work. It's a way of saying thank you for being here.
I don't necessarily think discounts are always the best way to encourage people to subscribe. Margins can already be quite small, and you don't want to undervalue your art just to make a sale.
For me, the newsletter is also about telling people more about the projects than they would get from a short social media video.
Most of my Reels are about 25 seconds long. You're trying to show someone a project from start to finish, sometimes reducing four weeks of work into those 25 seconds.
But people have questions. They want to know how you made something, what the experience was like, and what happened behind the scenes.
For example, I can tell subscribers what it was like to step onto Centre Court at Wimbledon and make a drawing there at three in the morning. People have emailed me saying they found that fascinating and wouldn't have known any of it from watching the video alone.
I was initially worried that people might not be interested in what I had to say outside of my videos. But there are people who want to know more. That's what a newsletter is good at doing.
With so many inquiries coming in, how do you decide which projects to take on?
It's a really good question because it's different for every artist.
In my case, it takes a minimum of three to four weeks to make a single drawing. Typewriter art is completely handmade because you're physically pressing keys to create the image. There aren't really any steps you can skip to make it quicker.
Within a year, I can only take on about 12 projects. I normally do one project a month. They have to count. You have to pick projects that tick certain boxes. It needs to be something you enjoy doing, but also something your audience enjoys.
Finding that balance can be difficult. It sometimes takes years of practice to understand what resonates with people while also figuring out what you enjoy making.
If a project is going to take four weeks of your time, you don't want to spend those weeks doing something you're not passionate about. You need to understand what your audience enjoys, but don't let that stop you from experimenting.
A good example is my Wimbledon project. Before that, a lot of the prints and originals I sold were landmarks and cityscapes from different locations around the world. With my background in architecture, those were subjects I enjoyed drawing, and I knew they were my bread and butter.
But outside of art, I also have other interests, like tennis. I wanted to find a way to make a Wimbledon-themed drawing. It felt like a creative risk because it was very different from the work I was traditionally producing.
I remember having a terrible creative block in May and thinking about what I was going to spend the next six weeks doing. Wimbledon was coming up, so I decided to take the risk and make a drawing based around it.
I also wanted to experiment with animation, which I'd played around with but hadn't fully developed into a finished piece before. I decided to create an animated tennis rally, with each frame individually typed.
What was interesting was that Wimbledon hadn't approached me. I'd actually contacted them beforehand to ask if they'd be interested in having me create a drawing on location, perhaps on Centre Court, and they said no.
But I still wanted to do the drawing regardless, even if I had to make it from my studio. I started testing different video edits on Instagram using trial Reels. I might create ten different versions of the same video and publish them every other day to see how they perform.
One of those Wimbledon videos started growing and growing, and I realized I needed to act on it. People were asking where they could buy the print, but the product page wasn't ready.
We moved the schedule forward and quickly got everything set up so people could buy it. The risk paid off because I started receiving inquiries from people asking whether I'd work with other sports. Several Formula 1 teams got in touch about potential projects.
I thought, wow, that's amazing. I would have loved to do a Formula 1 project anyway, but perhaps those opportunities wouldn't have come along if I hadn't made the Wimbledon drawing first.
I'd created an example of what I could do, and suddenly people could see the possibilities. The animation also opened up another opportunity. Because it consisted of multiple frames, I had more miniature originals that I could sell, rather than having just one original available.
That project opened up a whole other doorway to future work.
I think it's valuable to create something for yourself, even if you don't know where it will lead. Sometimes you make something purely for the fun of it, and it becomes an example of what you could do for a future commercial partner.
It's no different from going to a job interview and showing someone your portfolio. You're demonstrating what you're capable of, except you're doing it through your work on social media.
Unless people can read your mind, they don't know what you're capable of. If you're only known for one very specific subject, that can limit you. There may only be so many commercial opportunities related to that subject. But if you start introducing new things into your work, you don't know where that might lead or who might approach you as a result.
What's interesting is that social media teams at brands, venues, and sports organizations often discover ideas while scrolling on their phones. I've heard directly from people who found something I posted, shared it with their team, and suggested working with me.
That's why I think social media has a lot of merit. Your work can be discovered by someone you never would have had the opportunity to meet otherwise. You don't necessarily have to be on a list to be picked.
Which artists should we keep an eye on?
One is Ed Fairburn. I genuinely love his work.
When I was a child, I loved reading maps. I loved looking at all the different locations and the little snippets of maps in books. The way Ed has taken maps and introduced portraiture through overlapping drawings is so clever.
Another artist I like is Leo Park, who goes by Draw Vengas on Instagram. He's a Korean-based artist, and I think he's only 17. What he's been able to achieve at such a young age is incredible. He came to visit my studio in the UK and occasionally comes over to London to make drawings on location.
He creates these amazing, almost theatrical versions of landmarks. He's recently been drawing places like St Paul's Cathedral and Trafalgar Square. I kind of wish I had been in his position when I was 17. He's built an amazing following, and he's still got his whole life ahead of him to decide what he wants to do. It'll be really interesting to watch his career and see where he goes.
Key Insights
1. Don't wait for permission to show people what you can do.
James didn't wait for a client to commission a Wimbledon drawing. He had an idea, pursued it independently, and created something that eventually attracted the attention of potential commercial partners.
The important distinction is that he didn't simply tell people what he could do. He made the work and gave them something concrete to respond to.
For artists, a self-initiated project can be more than a personal experiment. It can become a portfolio piece, a new product, a way to reach a different audience, or proof that you can work with a particular brand or industry.
You don't need to wait until someone gives you an opportunity to demonstrate your capabilities. Sometimes creating the example is what makes the opportunity possible.
2. Think about the long-term value of a project, not just the initial fee.
James explains why he tries to retain the ability to sell prints of commissioned and commercial work. A commission may provide immediate income, but it can also take weeks to complete. If the client purchases exclusive rights and the artist can no longer sell prints, that decision affects the project's potential long-term value.
This is why contracts, intellectual property rights, and reproduction permissions matter. Artists should understand what rights a client is requesting and how those rights affect future income before agreeing to a fee.
A project doesn't always need to generate revenue indefinitely, and James acknowledges that some projects are worth doing simply because he loves the subject. The key is understanding the trade-off and making that decision intentionally.
3. Build a business that can handle success.
When one of James's videos unexpectedly went viral, his family turned their living room and dining room into a makeshift fulfillment center. The surge in orders was exciting, but the process wasn't sustainable.
Moving to a professional fulfillment service helped him manage printing, packaging, shipping, international delivery, and framing without having to do everything himself.
It's a useful reminder that business infrastructure matters even for artists working independently. As demand grows, the systems that worked when you had a handful of orders may no longer be enough.
Outsourcing doesn't necessarily mean losing control of your business. In James's case, it allowed him to maintain quality, improve the customer experience, and spend more time on the work only he could do.
4. Social media can be a discovery tool, not just a place to display finished work.
James's move from static photographs to Reels significantly expanded the reach of his work. Rather than relying primarily on existing followers, he began reaching people who had never encountered his art before.
His experience highlights an important distinction between maintaining an online portfolio and actively making work discoverable.
Artists can use different formats for different purposes. A photograph might showcase the finished piece, while a video can reveal the process, demonstrate the uniqueness of a medium, or give a new audience a reason to stop scrolling.
No format guarantees success, and James recognizes that social media has its drawbacks. But experimenting with how work is presented can create opportunities that simply posting finished images may not.
5. Your newsletter can deepen the relationship beyond the sale.
James uses social media to introduce people to his work and his newsletter to give interested followers more context.
A short video might show the finished drawing, but an email can explain the story behind it, the process of creating it, or an experience that would otherwise remain unseen. Newsletter subscribers can also receive early access to releases and opportunities to win original pieces.
The lesson is that an artist's audience doesn't necessarily want to see only the artwork. Some people want to understand the person, decisions, and experiences behind it.
A newsletter gives artists a way to build that relationship while creating a direct communication channel that isn't entirely dependent on social media algorithms.
6. Experiment beyond what people already know you for.
James's cityscapes were a reliable part of his business, but he chose to pursue a Wimbledon project that differed from his usual work. That experiment introduced animation into his practice, generated new sales opportunities, and attracted inquiries from potential sports partners.
This is the balance artists often have to navigate: understanding what their audience already values without becoming confined by it.
Your existing work can provide stability, while new projects allow you to explore other interests and demonstrate additional capabilities. Not every experiment will succeed, and not every creative idea needs to become a product.
But occasionally, the project that seems least connected to your usual work can introduce people to a side of your practice they hadn't considered before.
You don't always know what an idea is capable of opening up until you make it.