About GOOD DAMAGE

Tattoo culture has a media problem. Repost pages that charge artists for exposure. Trade publications that read like press releases. Instagram accounts farming engagement instead of telling stories. Corporate magazines that discovered tattooing was trending and immediately made it boring.

Nobody was building the publication this culture actually deserves. So we did.

GOOD DAMAGE is an independent tattoo culture publication — online and in special print editions — covering the real world of tattooing. The artists doing genuinely interesting work in cities that get overlooked. The studios that feel like something. The expos rewriting what an expo can be. The history that lives in the people still doing it. The machines, the ink, the craft, and the arguments about all three.

We cover every style equally — blackwork, Japanese, fine line, realism, neo-trad, abstract, traditional — because the culture is bigger than any one aesthetic, and so is the story worth telling about it.

We also cover what sits next to tattooing — film, music, sport, gaming, the places where ink shows up in culture and says something real about the person wearing it.

Who it's for

Working tattooists who want to see their industry covered with the same seriousness as any other creative field. Collectors who care about the culture behind what they're getting. Studio owners who want their waiting rooms to have something worth reading in them. Anyone who's ever picked up a tattoo magazine and felt like it was made for someone else.

GOOD DAMAGE is for everyone inside the skin — and everyone curious about what that world actually looks like.

Why it matters

Independent media is disappearing. Print media is disappearing faster. And the tattoo industry in Australia has never really had an editorial voice of its own — nobody documenting its history, championing its artists, or holding a mirror up to the culture in a way that feels true.

But there's a bigger reason this exists, and it's worth saying plainly. Tattooing still carries a reputation it outgrew years ago. There's a generation — and a certain end of polite society — that quietly files tattoos under criminal, or low-rent, or a phase you'll grow out of. That picture is decades out of date, and the way to retire it isn't to argue. It's to show the work: the artists, the craft, the people, the care, covered with the seriousness any other creative field takes for granted. Do that well enough for long enough and the old assumption just quietly falls over.

So GOOD DAMAGE isn't here to destroy anything or pick a fight. It's here to widen the circle — to be the thing a curious person can pick up and come away from with a slightly rewritten idea of what a tattooer actually is. For the working artist, for the collector, for the grandparent flipping through it in a waiting room. Not just for Australia — for New Zealand, for the global tattoo community, for anyone who believes real stories told well are worth the effort.

The culture deserves better than an algorithm. We're building something that lasts.

Who makes it

GOOD DAMAGE is founded and edited by Ty Beable — photographer, videographer, and content creator based in Brisbane.

While not a tattooist himself, Ty has spent years working in and around the industry — creating content for artists, studios, and brands, building marketing strategies that have kept artists booked out three to six months ahead during quieter periods, and building genuine relationships across the community. His closest circle includes working tattoo artists and brand owners within the industry. He's married to a tattoo artist. This isn't a publication built by someone who discovered tattooing was interesting from the outside. It's built by someone who's been inside the culture long enough to know what it's been missing.

Previously at TheMusic.com.au, Kill Your Stereo, Purple Sneakers, and Countrytown Australia — which means GOOD DAMAGE is built on real editorial experience, not wishful thinking.

Contributors, photographers, and writers from inside the tattoo world and beyond. If you have a story worth telling, we want to hear it.

Get involved

To pitch a story or contribute photography — get in touch.

To support the publication and receive print editions — subscribe.

To advertise with an audience that actually gives a damn — read this first.