Khalid.
SABA KHALID · NARRATIVE DESIGN & CREATIVE DIRECTION FOR AI
make anything.
Somebody has to
know what’s good.
I help small mission-driven organisations tell the truth about their work, and build the small systems that let their people keep doing it.
the story, and the small systems that keep it true.
Case studies.
Raaji
- THE PROBLEM
- Girls across Pakistan reached their first period knowing almost nothing, with nobody safe to ask.
- WHAT I DID
- Founded it, led the product and safeguarding, and wrote every answer the chatbot gave. Engineers built the code.
- WHAT HAPPENED
- In one session in four Karachi schools, girls agreeing a period is nothing to be ashamed of went from 29% to 84%.
Ghost Nets
- THE PROBLEM
- Lost and dumped fishing net keeps catching turtles, dolphins and the catch a boat needed, for centuries.
- WHAT I DID
- Built a jewellery line from nets pulled out of the water off Karachi, designed with Muhammad Waqar J Khan and braided by fishermen’s wives.
- WHAT HAPPENED
- Top ten in WWF-Pakistan’s Green Innovation Challenge, under the UN Environment Clean Seas campaign.
The Grant Room
- THE PROBLEM
- Every grant starts from a blank page, even when the organisation answered the same questions last year, and the person who knew the answers has left.
- WHAT I DID
- Designed and built a working room: approved answers come back with a receipt, gaps stay empty, figures are always typed by a person, and the organisation sets the rules.
- WHAT HAPPENED
- A working prototype with a fictional museum. Or drop in your own past applications and see what your room would hold.
Comics, tools, letters.
the three cases above are the proof: a story, a system, a product. this is everything else i make — drawn, built or written.
Who Holds The Knife
comics on labour, power and AI.
read the comics →
Saving Sarah
fourteen days of lockdown in one karachi room — a game about what a day is for.
play it →CUE
the city, told by the people standing in it — read anywhere, heard on the spot.
see the tool →
Who Gets To Be Called The Author?
what AI exposes rather than transforms — and who gets assumed a bot.
read the letters →poems, a memoir, essays, photographs. where the judgment comes from.
Three jobs.
FULL SCOPE OF EACH →for small cultural and mission-driven organisations. each one is fixed-scope, with what ships, the review points and the price agreed before we start.
Clarify the story
what you are, who it’s for and why now — in words that hold up in front of funders, press and partners.
- → narrative & positioning
- → identity and asset kit
- → funder deck & launch page
Fix one workflow
one recurring task — the board report, the donor draft, the grant — drafted by AI inside the tools you already use.
- → the workflow, tested on real examples
- → review steps a person signs off
- → one named owner on your team
Train the team
your people learn to use AI well on their own work, with the guardrails written down, so they stop needing me.
- → hands-on sessions on your own material
- → a written AI use policy
- → a handover plan with dates
not sure which? write to me with what’s stuck and i’ll tell you honestly, including when it’s none of them. after an engagement, advisory runs $2–4k a month.
Get an assessment.
Four questions about the work. I send back a short read: where I’d start, and what it would take.
Some of this belongs
inside a team.
not everything should be a contract. i’m open to one permanent role — building the standard with the people who’ll keep it.
talk about a role →
POETICA.STUDIO · EST. 2026