Our first Kurdistan region competition

Black Automation is launching its first design competition in the Kurdistan region.

The brief is deliberately open. Make anything — a poster, a garment, a package, a sign, a screen, an object, a short film — on one condition: our logo is on it. Beyond that there is no category, no prescribed format, no palette to match and no house style to respect.

We are more interested in what people do with the mark than in seeing it used correctly.

The rules, in full

• Make anything. Any medium, any format, any size.
• Our logo has to be on it. That is the only requirement about the work itself.
• Open to entrants in the Kurdistan region.
• One winner. The winning piece is featured on this site, credited to whoever made it.

Why an open brief

A tighter brief would get us better-behaved entries and teach us nothing. We already know what our mark looks like applied correctly — we drew the guidelines. What we do not know is what it looks like in someone else's hands, in a medium we would not have chosen, made by someone who owes us no deference.

That is the whole point of running this rather than commissioning something. A competition where the brief predicts the outcome is a procurement exercise with extra steps.

What we are looking for

Nothing we can usefully specify, which is the honest answer. Craft is obvious when it is there. So is a decision someone actually made rather than defaulted into. We would rather see one confident idea executed properly than a safe piece that offends nobody — the same thing we say about client work.

Not open yet

The closing date and the address for entries are being finalised and will be published here as a second dispatch before anything opens. Until then this is an announcement rather than a call for submissions, so please do not send work in — there is nowhere for it to go, and we would rather say that than quietly collect early entries and lose them.

If you want the mark itself, ask us on the contact page and we will send you the files.