Collection

Creators worth knowing

Writers, illustrators, filmmakers and newsletter people who built an audience by making things.

Audience is the lazy word for it. What these people did was make something over and over in public, long before anyone was watching, and hold the taste steady enough that the watching eventually started.

The output varies wildly here — pixels, prose, film, posters, a daily email. The habit underneath it does not.

The creators

30 profiled so far, newest first.

• Krzysztof Grzybacz Paints by taking the paint off, so the colour left behind is the picture Krzysztof Grzybacz painted flowers as though they were people for years, and now paints people the same way, using a method where every mark is made by removal Kraków
• Antony Szmierek Put his poems over house beats and went to number one on the dance chart Antony Szmierek taught English, wrote two novels and read at Manchester open mics, then set the poems to dance music and took his debut album to number one on the UK dance chart Manchester
• madamestarlet Writes it, sings it, produces it, films it and edits it, out of a bedroom in Chicago madamestarlet has put out ten records in four years with no label behind her, and she has done every single job on every one of them Chicago
• Arkin Pal An Indian country musician, which was not a category before he made one Arkin Pal was cutting other bands' music videos two years ago and is on the Lollapalooza India lineup as the country artist everyone said India would not want Kuala Lumpur
• Craig Mod Walked a thousand kilometres of an old Japanese highway in forty days and made it a book about toast Craig Mod has spent seven years proving that a few thousand readers who actually care will pay for better work than a few million who do not Japan
• Gaurabh Mathure Designed the Nike FuelBand, sold his company, then went on YouTube and taught himself to sell a $99 subscription Gaurabh Mathure had sixteen years and an acquisition behind him, and still let a camera watch him do beginner reps Brooklyn
• Nicky Case Made forty-two games and essays about hard ideas and put every one in the public domain Nicky Case built the thing everyone else would have founded a company on, then waived the copyright so anyone could take it Canada
• Simone Giertz Built machines designed to fail, which is much harder than building ones that work Simone Giertz spent years engineering robots to go wrong in exactly the right way, and now runs a design company where nothing does Los Angeles
• Anne-Laure Le Cunff Left Google for a neuroscience PhD, then wrote the case against having a plan Anne-Laure Le Cunff walked away from a global lead role at Google to study the brain, and came back with a bestseller arguing that goals are mostly a trap London
• Surendra Singh Choudhry Posts as destruction, spends his days repairing Surendra Singh Choudhry posts under a handle that means devastation, and has spent every month since Republic Day pulling a river back out of the garbage by hand Biaora, Madhya Pradesh
• Lucy Blakiston The pen pal who built a newsroom Lucy Blakiston writes to millions of people like they are her only reader, and spent years making sure none of them knew her face New Zealand
• KP The Build In Public guy, professionally KP built an audience by narrating his own work, then made a career out of doing it for everyone else Atlanta
• Abhishek Chaudhary Product designer and illustrator, Chaudhary Ki Diary Abhishek Chaudhary makes software look obvious in Berlin, then goes home and makes Bollywood look strange Berlin
• Simon Sinek Anthropologist by training, optimist by trade Simon Sinek got filed under business guru, but he was trained to study humans as a species New York
• Andrew Tattersall Software engineer and creator, building The Polymath App Andrew Tattersall has 476,000 followers on the scroll, and he is building an app to cure it Manchester
• Mia McGrath Creator and author of Frugal Chic Mia McGrath sold luxury fashion for a living, then trademarked a way to want it without going broke United Kingdom
• Caroline Zook Artist and co-founder, Wandering Aimfully Caroline Zook built the rare creative business that didn't eat the creative Silver Coast, Portugal
• Carson Scott Creative strategist, Orange Tree Studio Carson Scott makes people obsessed with products that have no business being interesting
• Catherine Goetze Creator of CatGPT, founder of Physical Phones Catherine Goetze teaches a million people to use AI, then sells them a landline to put the phone down LA, SF, NY
• Colleen Yu Filmmaker and creator, Film With Colleen Colleen Yu films her grandmother's ICU room and a brand campaign with the same care New York
• Danielle Baskin Artist and parallel founder of 23 businesses Danielle Baskin has started 23 real businesses and refuses to shut any of them down San Francisco
• Francesco D'Alessio Founder, Tool Finder Francesco D'Alessio watched a decade of productivity apps so you only have to download one United Kingdom
• Jordan Rogers Sports marketing consultant and keynote speaker Jordan Rogers went from a jail cell to Nike, and he posts the mugshot himself Dallas
• Kat Espinosa Designer and founder, Moonfrank Kat Espinosa took her design taste out of the client-services grinder and gave it a name of its own Manila
• Lois van Baarle Digital artist, Loish Lois van Baarle drew on the internet until three million people showed up to watch The Netherlands
• Nadieh Bremer Data visualization artist, Visual Cinnamon Nadieh Bremer went from mapping stars to making data look like something you'd hang on a wall The Netherlands
• Sally Huang Product designer and founder, Saltee Sally Huang started in art, detoured through software, and came back holding a vending machine New York
• Steph Smith Creator, Internet Pipes Steph Smith got great at finding internet gold, then sold everyone else the shovel map Remote
• Yasmin Saira Founder, Theory of Khaos Yasmin Saira thinks your brand is failing because it is trying too hard to be liked London
• Tom Orbach Unconventional marketer, viral experiment machine Tom Orbach put a Cringe Level slider on LinkedIn narcissism and sold the joke before most people finished their launch thread New York