Mr Bingo is a London-based illustrator with an unbridled creative passion to do whatever he wants. After leaving a 15-year career as a commercial illustrator, he launched a Kickstarter to fund a book about his Hate Mail project – a series of rude hand-illustrated postcards sent to (consenting) strangers. Since then, he has amassed a cult following on social media for his provocative illustrations, recently opening his studio shop in London.
At this year's OFFF Festival, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Mr Bingo to discuss his career evolution. Together, we talked about navigating the changing planes of social media platforms, understanding artistic burnout and building a uniquely personal relationship with his followers.
In tandem with his Kickstarter in 2015, Mr Bingo's online presence was increasingly growing. While he acknowledges that his rise was helped by the evolution of social media, he believes that it shouldn't deter aspiring artists. "I don't think anything's oversaturated. No one young should ever think that it's too late, or that we're so overwhelmed that there isn't room. There's always room for more stuff in the world, and there's always a space for you to flourish," he says.
"But I can understand why people would feel overwhelmed when they graduate and go, 'Oh, fucking hell, there's literally hundreds of thousands of people making stuff, and it's all here on my phone'. It was easier for me when I graduated in 2001 – even though you knew there were lots of people out there making amazing stuff, it didn't feel like it does today."
In a world with creative tools at our fingertips, Bingo addresses the "blurred place" that social media has become. "Anyone can make anything. Because the apps are so good now, you can make quite a nice piece of design for your Instagram story – they've made it all for you, and everything looks pretty nice already. It's quite hard to stand out, but for me, the way to stand out is to have good ideas," he explains.
While it's certainly not for everyone, Bingo's personable approach to fan interaction has built a strong online following – something that he believes has been instrumental in his success. "So many artists make great work, but they hide and they don't want to speak to people – they're shy, or moody, or just not up for meeting their fans. Whereas, for me, it feels like we are all in this together – we're collaborating – and I'm just the puppet master managing the whole thing," Bingo says.
"I get so much out of the relationship with my audience – you can see it fuels my work. Often, ideas will come out of talking to them, in the shop or online. Sometimes people will come up with an idea for a commission, and I say, 'Oh my god, I love that. Do you mind if I roll this out and offer it to other people?' And they always say, Yeah! No one ever wants a cut of the money. They're just happy to be part of the process."
"It's something I realised 10 years ago when I did my Kickstarter. The thing that was so magical about that project was that it wasn't working with a company or a publisher like you would normally do. With my Kickstarter, every penny was raised by public funding from fans of the project. It felt like we'd gone up against the industry and proved you don't need to have a book published in a traditional way. You don't need to have all these meetings and compromises and pay loads of money to the publisher. You can just make it if you've got a big enough group of people. It felt really special to have all those people's names in the back of the book. It felt like we'd made it together," Bingo explains.
While being accessible to his audience has been beneficial for Bingo, it also led to a feeling of constant surveillance and a pressure to create."I've decided only recently that you don't need to put stuff out all the time, and you shouldn't have pressure to do that," he says.
"If I don't have a good idea for a month, I always get really worried. First of all, I think. 'Maybe my career is over, I've had all my good ideas now – that's it, I need to go and find a job.' Or the other thing I worry about is that people will think, 'Oh, I've noticed he hasn't posted very much recently. He's fallen off, he's lost it,' but that second one is definitely not true."
"I know it's not true because I took a year off work in 2023 and went travelling around the world with a rucksack. I didn't make anything new for 365 days, and my biggest fear was that I would come back and people would have forgotten about me."
"I came back and no one had gone anywhere – everyone was just completely up for me carrying on. I didn't need to prove myself again; I literally picked up where I'd left off the year before. It was almost like nobody noticed. Most people don't notice you're gone for a year because they're getting on with their lives. That was a great lesson, because it means I'm more relaxed now about constantly putting new stuff out. Everyone needs to be a bit more patient," Bingo adds.
