How it started?
While the origin of digital art depends on the exact definition you choose, it’s clear that using technology to create or present artworks has been around for some time now. As technology evolved, so did the digital artwork, which now includes computer graphics, illustrations, music, pixel art, motion graphics, etc. With this digital art takes an important place within the entertainment industry.

How it’s going?

Digital art changed a lot over the past years. While some areas evolved to became more easily accessible, others popped up generating unique niches and opportunities.

1. Evolution: As everyone started spending more time at home, working remotely and finding new passions back when the COVID pandemic started, a lot of digital art types evolved.

First, the art of illustration became more popular. Hand-crafted illustrations have always been mesmerizing, yet recently all of a sudden people had more time and mental availability to appreciate them.

Working with rising artists has also become widespread, considering the number of requests they receive increased a lot since the start of the pandemic.

EcardForest is a perfect example here, as they create high quality illustrations, work with artists and basically drove the evolution of one very traditional product – the greeting card. By introducing a digital solution with ecards for groups to sign, they changed the way we write and send greeting cards. Suddenly the whole team, family or clique could easily send a group signed ecard, no matter the distance. To add to that, the animated ecards for group to sign are almost hypnotic and keep us staring.

Besides illustration, video evolved too, thanks to platforms like TikTok where everyone became a content creator, having equal chances to reach thousands of thousands of viewers. The empowerment coming from such platforms made people more selective and demanding too. From expensive Netflix productions to the way we communicate everyday with friends, family members or followers, the prevalence of high-quality video is impressive and everything else gets little to no attention at all.

Another noticeable evolution lies in the way people started experiencing and perceiving art. As museums, galleries and theaters were closed for a long time, digital visits and online performances were offered instead. Instead of going to crowded museums, queuing to see a popular painting or sculpture or even attending a concert, people could enjoy the view from their sofa in comfy clothes. This way of art experience certainly touches less senses as compared to the perception in real. Similar to what we mentioned about video, the digital evolution has made it more challenging to win as people become more demanding and easily distracted.

2. Innovation: While we witnessed some art types evolving, there were also some new ones which were just born. Let’s take NFT as an example. The non-fungible tokens created quite some buzz back in Spring 2021. Similar to selling original masterpiece paintings in an auction, digital art could be sold and secured using NFT. While NFT is an innovation, it can also be described as an evolution of fine art collecting, as art pieces and the corresponding NFTs can be sold or transferred but not duplicated and secure that only one person owns the art. Media and crypto experts are still not sure if NFTs are just a shiny new thing that will seize to exist soon, or the path digital art will eventually follow.

While digital art is definitely moving, there is still a lot of uncertainty, but we expect it to evolve even further in the future. In the end only time will tell. One thing is sure though, the art consumer is changing as well and is becoming more demanding so it’s time for digital art to answer the call.