( About )

ABOUT

We build what a business runs on, and design what it is known by.

Black is two companies in Erbil, and they were built to sit beside each other.

Black Automation makes the systems businesses actually run on — a clinic platform, a property system, and the automation and AI layers around them. Black Studio does the design: identity, interface, motion and art direction, thirty-nine pieces so far, one per client.

Neither is a department of the other, and neither is the other's marketing. They sit together because the two halves fail separately. A system nobody wants to open is a system nobody uses, and an identity with nothing running underneath it is a picture of a company rather than one.

Most of our clients are here — Iraq and the Kurdistan region — alongside names you would recognise from anywhere. The offer is the one printed at the bottom of every page on this site: strategy, design and development, lightning-fast, lean, and sensibly priced. We would rather be the company that finished the thing than the one that presented it best.

Who that is

Black is three people. Named because the refusals below are somebody's, and so is anything that goes wrong.

  • Mohamad Haitham Rabee
  • Zrng Kak Amen Mawlood
  • Shahla Hamed Jaff

What we turn down

  1. 01Work that has already been designed and needs someone to press the buttons.
  2. 02Three directions to choose from. We will bring one, and the reasoning that got there.
  3. 03A system nobody in the building asked for. If the people who have to use it every morning were not consulted, we are the wrong people to build it.
  4. 04A brief whose only measure of success is that nobody objects.
  5. 05Anything we would not put in the set on this site.

How it gets made

  1. 01ListenLonger than is comfortable, before anything is drawn or typed.
  2. 02ArgueInternally, and then with you. This is the part that shows later.
  3. 03Build the ugly oneFast, wrong, and real enough to react to.
  4. 04Keep going past fineFine is where most work stops. It is not a finish line.

What we do

What we build

  • Websites
  • Products
  • Automation
  • AI
  • Infrastructure

What we design

  • Brand identity
  • Visual strategy
  • Black Creative
  • Motion design
  • Micro interactions
  • Type system
  • Creative direction
  • Design Language
  • Interface design
  • Web experience
  • Digital storytelling
  • Art direction
  • Visual Narrative
  • Creative coding

Start something

Tell us what you are trying to accomplish. The rest is our problem.

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