About the Artist

THE MAN BEHIND THE MACHINES

Black Art Graphics isn't a design agency or a factory. It's one engineer, one workshop, and an idea I've spent more than a decade refining.

If you've arrived here assuming Black Art Graphics is a large company with a team of designers, you might be surprised to learn that it isn't.

Black Art Graphics is me — Dan.

I started the business in 2015 with an idea for something I wanted to exist, but couldn't buy: genuinely detailed automotive artwork that felt as carefully engineered as the cars it celebrated.

At the time, Black Art Graphics was little more than an idea, some early artwork and a Kickstarter campaign. That first campaign raised around £17,000, enough to buy the laser equipment, aluminium and materials I needed to turn the idea into a real product.

And so Engineered Art was born.

BUILT, NOT BOUGHT

I've always approached Black Art Graphics from the perspective of an engineer rather than a conventional artist.

My background is in Motorsport Engineering, mechanical design, 3D CAD and engineering, and I've always been fascinated by the details that make one machine different from another.

Every Engineered Art illustration starts with a set of photogrammetry images using specialist equipment from a real vehicle. From there, I painstakingly recreate the car as a highly detailed orthographic technical illustration, studying its proportions, bodywork, wheels, brakes, trim and the countless small details that give each model its identity.

There isn't a library of generic car drawings being dropped into templates.

The artwork you see throughout this site has been built up vehicle by vehicle, line by line.

Over the years that catalogue has grown from the first handful of cars to hundreds of individual designs, covering everything from everyday enthusiast cars to some of the rarest and most extraordinary machines in the world.

FROM A COMPUTER SCREEN TO ALUMINIUM

The artwork was only ever half of the idea.

I wanted the finished object to feel substantial.

That's why Engineered Art isn't printed onto paper or card. Each piece is made from 3mm aluminium, prepared and anodised before the artwork is permanently laser engraved into its surface.

It combines two things I've always loved: engineering and art.

And because every plaque is made to order, it can become more than an illustration of a particular model.

Registration numbers, VINs, build dates, paint codes, factory specifications, modifications, wheels and other details can be incorporated into the artwork to represent your particular car.

That's still one of my favourite parts of the process.

SOME INTERESTING PLACES ALONG THE WAY

What started as a small Kickstarter project has taken me considerably further than I imagined it would.

Black Art Graphics has produced work connected with manufacturers and specialists including Aston Martin, Gordon Murray Automotive, McLaren, Lotus, Pininfarina, Lexus and Hennessey, alongside thousands of pieces made for individual enthusiasts around the world.

I've had the opportunity to work around remarkable cars, meet some fascinating people and create artwork for vehicles I never imagined I'd get anywhere near when I started.

But despite all of that, Black Art Graphics never turned into a big corporation.

It's still a small independent business.

Very small, in fact.

SO WHO ACTUALLY MAKES YOUR PLAQUE?

I do.

When you contact Black Art Graphics, you're not speaking to a customer-service department.

When your artwork needs developing, it isn't being sent to an anonymous design team.

When a car needs photographing, there is no team of contracted photographers to call.

When a plaque needs manufacturing, packing and dropping to the post office, there is no slick production line staffed by trained professionals.

And when something unusual comes through the door, there isn't a committee deciding whether we can do it.

You're generally talking directly to the person who not designed the product in the first place, but also designed the entire website and custom coded all the APIs that run the backend order management system and UI interfaces.

I didn't design a product, I designed the entire ecosystem around it, and I also have to maintain it.

That inevitably means I can't operate quite like Amazon. At busy times there can be a queue, and genuinely bespoke work takes time.

But the other side of that equation is that I actually care what leaves the workshop with the Black Art Graphics name on it.

This business has occupied a fairly ridiculous proportion of my life for more than a decade.

I'm still here because I love making these things.

MORE THAN A PICTURE OF A CAR

Over the years I've realised that the most interesting thing about Engineered Art isn't really the aluminium, the laser or even the illustration.

It's the story attached to the machine.

Sometimes it's someone's first performance car. Sometimes it's the car they've spent ten years building. Sometimes it's a retirement present, a wedding gift, a championship-winning race car or something bought to remember a vehicle that's no longer around.

A specification, chassis number, date and collection of lines can carry an extraordinary amount of meaning to the person who knows what they represent.

That's what I want Black Art Graphics to preserve.

The machines we care about, the engineering behind them, and the stories that make them ours.

Thank you for supporting an independent business — and for allowing me to keep doing something that started as a slightly mad idea all those years ago.

Dan Kozakewycz
Founder, designer, engineer and general one-man-band
Black Art Graphics