One of the most common pieces of advice floating around online is that your first tattoo should be small, almost as though tattooing is something you need to cautiously sample before committing to. After speaking to dozens of artists while working on this archive, I don't know if I agree.

Aki (Inkyouandme   on IG) , one of the artists featured in the book, told me that a lot of people shrink designs because they are afraid of the pain, which often creates a completely different problem later. The tattoo no longer looks the way it was intended to look, the composition becomes compromised, and in some cases the placement ends up occupying space that could have supported a larger project years down the line. It doesn't mean every first tattoo needs to be huge, but it does mean that "start small" is probably not the universal rule people think it is.

In fact, if I regret anything about my own first tattoo, it isn't the design at all. It's where I put it.

I got tattooed at an age where I was thinking almost exclusively about the tattoo itself. I wasn't thinking about sleeves, back pieces, body suits or the possibility that I would end up with twenty-five tattoos and a completely different understanding of what I wanted from my body. At the time, my lower back felt like a practical decision. Now, years later, I look at that same piece of skin and immediately start imagining all the larger projects that could have lived there.

The tattoo remains. The placement is what I negotiate with.

And I think that's something first-time clients rarely get told. So much tattoo advice focuses on meaning, whether you'll still relate to the design in ten years, whether the symbolism is personal enough, whether you'll regret choosing a flower over a snake or a quote over an illustration. Meanwhile, artists are often thinking about entirely different questions. How will this age? Does the size suit the design? Does the placement make sense anatomically? Is there enough room for the tattoo to breathe?

The older I get, the more I realise that tattoos don't really exist in isolation from one another. They become part of an ongoing conversation with your body, one that continues long after the first appointment is over.

Blossom (blossoms.ink.realm on IG) , another artist featured in the archive, put it in a way I haven't stopped thinking about since she said it. Tattoos age with you, not against you. The goal isn't to remain attached to exactly the same meaning forever. The goal is to be able to look back years later and still recognise yourself in the person who made that decision.

I think that's a far kinder way of thinking about permanence.

Because the truth is that almost nobody arrives at their first appointment completely certain.

Over the last few months, while speaking to artists from across the country, I heard versions of the same story again and again. Clients worrying about pain, changing their minds three times, overthinking placements, and sitting in waiting rooms convinced they were making a terrible decision.

And yet, remarkably few of them wanted to leave.

The nervousness was there as was the excitement. And occasionally panic was there too.

But underneath all of it was curiosity.

If you're considering your first tattoo, that curiosity is probably a better thing to pay attention to than certainty. Certainty is rare. Most tattooed people I know are not walking around because they were one hundred percent sure. They're walking around because something about the experience felt important enough to explore, and because they found an artist whose work they trusted enough to place on their body.

Everything else tends to reveal itself afterwards.