What to pay attention to in tattoos

It's important to have your core idea fleshed out before setting up a consultation — unless you're coming in for lettering, which often only requires you to decide on a font. During the consultation, your artist can work out the finer details. You can show them any images you've saved as inspiration and figure out placement and pricing.

Depending on the time they have available, the artist may create a mock-up of your tattoo on the spot or a few days later, but ultimately, the final results will depend on several factors:

how much of your body you want to dedicate to the art?

how feasible the tattoo placement is?

how well the colors you want will show up on your skin tone?

how much time you want to spend with the artist?

Here's more on what you should consider when designing your next tattoo:

Style

Once you've decided what you want tattooed, you have to figure out how you want it to look. There are a ton of different tattooing styles, and you'll want to go to an artist who’s skilled in the look you're after.

Some of the most popular styles include:

American traditional. Characterized by clean, black outlines and the primary color palette, this style commonly features skulls and roses.

Traditional Japanese. Inspired by traditional Japanese artwork, this style's clean lines and minimal shading are often used to create tigers, koi fish, and flowers.

Realism. The goal of this style is to recreate subjects using shading and color contrast, as they appear in real life.

Illustrative. By combining aspects of traditional tattooing and realism, this style is about bold outlines and intense color saturation.

Neo-traditional. A modernized take on American traditional imagery, this style leans heavily on shading and color to create realistic portraiture.

Minimalism or geometric. With a focus on crisp black lines and negative space, this style is about precision. The results are often simple and symbolic.

But you don't need to be familiar with the lingo to get one of these styles. Browsing Instagram is incredibly helpful, as most artists post their work on their own channel and to a hashtag feed. If, for example, you've decided you want to get a tattoo of a cat, a quick #cattattoo search pulls up over 220,000 results.

Save the images you like most and show them to your artist during your consultation. They can use these as inspiration to create a one-of-a-kind piece of your own.

Design

Many people opt for pure illustration, but if you want script — standalone or alongside an image — you'll need to figure out what kind of font you want.

Adobe Typekit is a great place to look up font styles, offering everything from handwriting to typewriter. The site even lets you see your text of choice in the font you're considering so that you can actually visualize how it might look on your body.

If you see something you like, print out a couple of different versions to bring to your artist. They may not have your exact font on their computer, so they can use these pages as a reference.

Color

Although the style of tattoo often dictates the color palette, the artist can work with you to modify the design and style to better suit what you want.

That said, your skin tone plays a big role in how well individual colors will hold. For example, fair skin tends to hold white ink better than other skin tones. Red and purple pigments are also more vibrant on fairer skin tones.

Darker skin tones typically hold darker colors — think crimson red and royal blue — better than lighter hues. Having darker skin doesn't mean that you can't get pastels or other light hues, just that these options usually don't appear as pigmented as darker colors might.

Greyscale is also an option. With this style, your artist will use a mix of pure black, watered-down black, and white ink to create the appropriate shades and hues.

Size and location

Speaking of fading, outlines and shapes may look sharp and slick at first, but over time, these can fade or even blur. It all depends on the size and location of your tattoo. That's why it's important to think about where you want your tattoo and how visible you want it to be.

Often, location alone can determine your tattoo size. After all, there's only so much space on your forearm or your thigh.

Don't worry if you're still second guessing the finer details. Your artist can help you weigh the pros and cons of the location and sizing, as well as set expectations for how it'll feel when you're getting inked.