I'm a freelance illustrator fuelled by the culture surrounding the open-source movement.
It's hard to pinpoint the start of NoGood. It slowly emerged as the result of a decade-long exploration to create work that is personally fulfilling. Deciding to get back into a passion I neglected since my early 20s, I changed career paths and became an illustrator in 2017. At first, I accepted any project I got offered, but soon realised I needed a clearer purpose for my illustrations.
I developed an interest in bitcoin around the same time as my career switch. It took me a couple of years to fully understand the protocol. I finally joined the decentralised network when I set up a bitcoin node that I attempted to use as a payment processor for an online store. For which I required products to sell, and a name.
Most people were very sceptical of bitcoin back then (maybe rightly so) and it was hard to find any positive takes in the media. I came across an article titled "Bitcoin's very bad, no good year". And with that, I found a name for my new shop.
My first NoGood illustrations, which I sold as digital wallpapers, provided a glance of the themes the pseudonym would come to represent.
NoGood is my vision of the bitcoin and open-source ethos, presenting itself as an illustrated crew of tech-savvy outcasts, united by their obsession with electronics. Their modded devices enable unique capabilities, and create networks independent of traditional infrastructure. However, their innovations mostly go unnoticed, and they're labeled 'up to no good' by many.
As I started taking on freelance projects using my new pseudonym, it transformed from a fun experiment into a full-time job. Each new project expands this illustrated world of node runners and retro hardware. The crews favorite hardware store is Sovereign Electronics. They meet up at Offchain Ramen. They get their records at NoGood Radio.
I still use the node I set up in 2021. It sits in my studio, right next to my workstation and a softly buzzing Bitaxe. It runs Umbrel on a Raspberry Pi and handles all incoming and outgoing zaps. I run a separate node, called NoGoodNode, to process payments for the shop.
NoGood will forever be rooted in the bitcoin space, but my interests have broadened over time, and so has the scope of my work.