Ideas are everywhere. Opportunity is everywhere. So is the ability to make something happen.

Mad Black Cat exists because we believe that creativity should not belong exclusively to people with enormous budgets, large agencies or teams of specialists.

A good idea is still a good idea, whether it comes from a multinational company, a small business, a community group, an independent creator or somebody sitting at their kitchen table thinking:

“I wonder if I could do this?”

We believe they should find out.

We believe in making things

We like ideas.

But ideas sitting in notebooks, conversations and someone’s head don’t change very much.

Making things does.

So we make things.

Music. Books. Podcasts. Films. Advertising. Educational material. Campaigns. Characters. Experiments. Visuals. Things that have a useful purpose, things that make people think and occasionally things that exist simply because we wondered whether we could make them.

Some are commissioned.

Some are our own ideas.

Some start with a problem.

Some start with curiosity.

They all have something in common:

We actually make them.

We believe creativity should be accessible

You don’t need to be a multinational company to deserve good creative work.

You don’t need a huge marketing budget to tell a good story.

And you certainly shouldn’t have to understand the creative industry, its terminology or its technology before somebody will take your idea seriously.

Sometimes the solution is surprisingly simple.

Sometimes technology can make something dramatically more affordable.

Sometimes a smaller idea is better than a bigger one.

Sometimes you can do it yourself.

And sometimes you need somebody with the experience, skills and resources to make it happen.

All of those are perfectly valid.

We believe in helping people do things themselves

Mad Black Cat is a creative studio.

But it isn’t our ambition to make everyone dependent upon us.

Quite the opposite.

If we can show you how to do something yourself, we are happy to do that.

If we can point you towards a useful tool, explain a technique, share an idea or help you understand what is possible, that’s worthwhile.

If you subsequently decide that you would rather have us do it for you, that’s fine too.

Our success isn’t measured solely by how much work we sell.

Sometimes success is somebody saying:

“I didn’t realise I could do that.”

We believe in fair value

This is why our approach to pricing is different.

We ask two questions:

What can you realistically afford?

and

What is this actually worth to you?

Those answers help us work out what is reasonable.

We need to cover our costs. Our time and expertise have value. We are a business.

But we don’t believe that the objective of every project should be to extract the maximum amount of money from the person paying for it.

Sometimes we will recommend spending less.

Sometimes we will recommend doing something differently.

Sometimes we will tell you that you don’t need us at all.

For more about how that works in practice, see Our Pricing Philosophy.

We believe technology should reduce barriers, not increase them

New technology is changing what individuals and small organisations can create.

We are interested in that.

Very interested.

But technology itself isn’t the creative idea.

A button doesn’t replace judgement.

An AI tool doesn’t replace understanding.

Automation doesn’t magically make something good.

The opportunity is to combine technology with human imagination, experience and critical thinking to produce better results, more efficiently and more affordably.

If that means a small business can create something today that would once have required a large production budget, we think that’s exciting.

We believe in being honest about what we make

Not everything we produce is perfect.

Not everything is serious.

Some things are deliberately experimental.

Some are made to prove a point.

Some are educational.

Some are commercial.

Some are simply fun.

We would rather explain why something exists than pretend every production is a masterpiece.

That is why our work is accompanied by its story whenever possible.

What was the idea?

Why did we make it?

What were we trying to demonstrate?

What could somebody else do with the same idea?

The finished production is only part of the story.

We believe ethics matter

There are things we will do because we can.

There are things we will not do because we can.

Those are not necessarily the same thing.

Technology has made it possible to create extraordinarily convincing things very quickly. That creates enormous creative opportunities, but it also creates responsibilities.

We want our work to inform, educate, entertain, inspire and solve problems.

We don’t want our skills to become somebody else’s tool for deception, exploitation or harm.

That doesn’t mean we expect every piece of creative work to change the world.

It simply means that how something is made and what it is used for matter to us.

We believe generosity needs boundaries

If we have knowledge, experience or a skill that can genuinely help someone, we would rather put it to good use than keep it locked away simply because we could charge for it.

But helping people does not mean allowing ourselves to be exploited.

We will protect our intellectual property, our creative work and our specialist knowledge when we believe somebody intends to use them to exploit others, misrepresent them, or undermine the principles behind them.

We have learned that lesson.

Being generous does not mean being naïve.

We believe in showing, not just telling

We could tell you that we can produce advertising.

We could tell you that we can make podcasts.

We could tell you that we can develop a brand, create a video, produce music, write a book or build an educational campaign.

But we’d rather show you.

That is why the Mad Black Cat showcase will contain real productions and experiments.

Some will be client work.

Some will be our own projects.

Some may be deliberately unusual.

And some may have started with nothing more than a question.

Each one is an opportunity to demonstrate what can be done.

We believe inspiration has value

This may be the most important part.

If someone sees something we have made and thinks:

“I could do something like that.”

we consider that a success.

If a small business discovers a way to communicate with its customers that it hadn’t considered before, that’s a success.

If a creator finds the confidence to start something, that’s a success.

If someone learns something useful, that’s a success.

And if someone decides they would rather let us make it for them, that’s a perfectly good commercial success too.

There is room for all of those things.

So what is Mad Black Cat?

It is a creative studio.

It is a place to make things.

It is a place to experiment.

It is a place to learn.

It is a place where ideas can become productions.

And, hopefully, it is a place that occasionally makes somebody stop and think:

“That’s interesting. I wonder what I could make?”

If you have an idea, we may be able to help.

If you want to learn, we may be able to show you.

If you want us to make it, we can talk about that too.

But the starting point is always the same:

The idea comes first.

The people come first.

The money comes after that.

Mad Black Cat

Ideas worth making.