NODUM — Hero

Modern organizations run on systems most people never see.

Models, routing logic, prediction systems, optimization, and infrastructure shape decisions every day, but their behavior is often invisible to the people affected by them.

NODUM is a platform built to make the invisible logic underneath modern business visible, legible, and defensible.

The UNDERNEATH campaign extends across film, print, out-of-home, digital, and reporting systems. Unified by a single visual language designed to explain complexity without reducing it.

Brand System

A unified visual language for NODUM Systems Intelligence built around a single constraint: if the system is invisible, the design must make it legible.

The palette reduces to five values — Void, Bone, Signal, Field, Trace — each assigned a specific functional role. Signal is reserved for hierarchy, tension, and interruption.

Everything else recedes.

Typography operates across two registers: Aktiv Grotesk for authority, IBM Plex Mono Light for data and metadata.

No decoration. No illustration. Form follows system logic

Color System

VOID
#0e0e0e
BONE
#f7f6f2
SIGNAL
#c0392b
FIELD
#888780
TRACE
#d4d2c9

Type System

Display — Aktiv Grotesk
Not magic. Math.
Editorial Body — IBM Plex Mono Light
Every link is a vote. But not all votes are equal. A link from a high-ranking page is worth more than a link from a low-ranking page. The algorithm iterates: score each page based on who links to it, then re-score. Repeat until scores stabilize.
Italic Feature — Playfair Display Italic
Not magic. Math.

Voice Principles

Declarative
Sentences end. No ellipses, no hedging.
Technical without jargon
The algorithm iterates. Scores stabilize. That is all.
Earned confidence
We did not build the math. We just finally put it to work.
Invisible speaker
No brand voice. The math speaks.

Annual Report

The Underneath campaign frames NODUM’s annual output as a transparency document. Twelve mechanisms. Twelve proofs.

The report structure mirrors the film series — one mechanism per chapter, each opening with a diagrammatic still, followed by an operational brief and the organizational consequences of opacity.

White ground throughout.

By the final page, the reader has encountered twelve systems they depend on but could not previously identify.

NODUM — Annual Report 2024
Systems Intelligence
Annual Report
FY 2024
AN—
NUAL
RE—
PORT
NODUM
Underneath Campaign
Visual Systems
Documentation

nodum.systems
FY 2024
01 / Letter to stakeholders02
The math
was always
there.
From the CEO
NODUM Systems Intelligence
FY 2024

12 mechanisms
7 markets
1 system

This year NODUM did something most enterprise software companies have not done in a decade: it made the invisible visible. Not through abstraction. Not through metaphor. Through direct, diagrammatic evidence of the mechanisms that run modern organizations.

If you cannot see the system, you cannot trust the outcome.

The Underneath campaign was not a marketing exercise. It was a proof of concept — that systems intelligence, when communicated with the precision of the systems it describes, changes the way organizations make decisions. Twelve films. Six surfaces. One argument.

We deployed across seven US markets simultaneously. We placed in the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, and Wired. We do not believe in aspiration without mechanism.

Revenue grew 47% year-over-year. Enterprise contract value increased by $18M. The film series generated 2.3M verified impressions in the first ninety days without a single paid social placement. The system did the work. It always does.

Amir Nouri, Chief Executive Officer  ·  January 2025
02 / Performance metrics04
Annual Recurring Revenue
$74M
↑ 47% YoY
Enterprise Clients
312+
↑ 89 new this year
Film Impressions
2.3M
First 90 days organic
Avg Contract Value
$238K
↑ $42K from prior year
Revenue
FY 2020–2024
USD millions

2024 record
$74M ARR
80
60
40
20
$26M
2020
$34M
2021
$45M
2022
$50M
2023
$74M
2024
$74M ARR 2024
Revenue by Segment
Enterprise58%$42.9M
Mid-Market27%$20.0M
SMB15%$11.1M
04 / Campaign markets08
Seven
US
Markets
OOH + Print
Simultaneous
Deployment

WSJ / FT / Wired
Q2–Q4 2024
CityFormatsPlacementsImpressions
New York48-sheet · Bus shelter · Transit24680K
San Francisco48-sheet · Bus shelter18420K
Chicago48-sheet · Transit14310K
Los Angeles48-sheet · Bus shelter16290K
BostonTransit · Bus shelter12210K
Seattle48-sheet10180K
Austin48-sheet · Bus shelter8210K
Total Placements
102
Total Impressions
2.3M
Print Publications
3
NODUM
Modern organizations run on systems no one built to be understood. NODUM makes the invisible logic underneath modern business visible, legible, and defensible.
nodum.systems
Systems Intelligence
Annual Report FY 2024
Self-initiated project
Sam Zavieh, CD
samzavieh.com

Film Series

Twelve short films. Each isolates a single algorithmic mechanism and renders it as diagrammatic evidence — no narration, no metaphor, no dramatization.

The films are flat. The camera does not move. The math moves.

Produced in 16:9 and generated to preserve the precision of the source diagrams.

Remainder. Triangulation. PageRank. Public Key. Collaborative Filtering. Gradient Descent. Packet Switching. Hash Collision. Fourier Transform. Cache Eviction. Bloom Filter. Dijkstra’s Algorithm

EPISODE 01 — REMAINDER Residual signal extraction through iterative subtraction. Large-format display · Editorial campaign extension

EPISODE 01 — REMAINDER Residual signal extraction through iterative subtraction. Large-format display · Editorial campaign extension

EPISODE 02 — TRIANGULATION Positional resolution through intersecting signal spheres. Large-format display · Editorial campaign extension

EPISODE 02 — TRIANGULATION Positional resolution through intersecting signal spheres. Large-format display · Editorial campaign extension

EPISODE 03 — PAGERANK Iterative authority scoring through weighted link traversal. Large-format display · Editorial campaign extension

EPISODE 03 — PAGERANK Iterative authority scoring through weighted link traversal. Large-format display · Editorial campaign extension

EPISODE 04 — PUBLIC KEY Asymmetric encryption through one-directional key pairing. Large-format display · Editorial campaign extension

EPISODE 04 — PUBLIC KEY Asymmetric encryption through one-directional key pairing. Large-format display · Editorial campaign extension

EPISODE 05 — COLLABORATIVE FILTERING Preference inference through overlapping behavioral matrices. Large-format display · Editorial campaign extension

EPISODE 05 — COLLABORATIVE FILTERING Preference inference through overlapping behavioral matrices. Large-format display · Editorial campaign extension

EPISODE 06 — GRADIENT DESCENT Error minimization through iterative terrain navigation. Large-format display · Editorial campaign extension

EPISODE 06 — GRADIENT DESCENT Error minimization through iterative terrain navigation. Large-format display · Editorial campaign extension

EPISODE 07 — PACKET SWITCHING Data fragmentation, independent routing, and destination reassembly. Large-format display · Editorial campaign extension

EPISODE 07 — PACKET SWITCHING Data fragmentation, independent routing, and destination reassembly. Large-format display · Editorial campaign extension

EPISODE 08 — HASH COLLISION Bucket conflict resolution through chaining and probing strategies. Large-format display · Editorial campaign extension

EPISODE 08 — HASH COLLISION Bucket conflict resolution through chaining and probing strategies. Large-format display · Editorial campaign extension

EPISODE 09 — FOURIER TRANSFORM Waveform decomposition into constituent frequency components. Large-format display · Editorial campaign extension

EPISODE 09 — FOURIER TRANSFORM Waveform decomposition into constituent frequency components. Large-format display · Editorial campaign extension

EPISODE 10 — CACHE EVICTION Memory management through least-recently-used priority displacement. Large-format display · Editorial campaign extension

EPISODE 10 — CACHE EVICTION Memory management through least-recently-used priority displacement. Large-format display · Editorial campaign extension

EPISODE 11 — BLOOM FILTER Probabilistic set membership through space-efficient bit hashing. Large-format display · Editorial campaign extension

EPISODE 11 — BLOOM FILTER Probabilistic set membership through space-efficient bit hashing. Large-format display · Editorial campaign extension

EPISODE 12 — DIJKSTRA'S ALGORITHM Shortest path resolution through exhaustive weighted graph traversal. Large-format display · Editorial campaign extension

EPISODE 12 — DIJKSTRA'S ALGORITHM Shortest path resolution through exhaustive weighted graph traversal. Large-format display · Editorial campaign extension

Storyboard

Each episode opens on a blank white field. The mechanism enters as pure line — no context, no label. As the sequence progresses, system structure becomes visible: nodes connect, weights distribute, paths emerge. Signal red marks the active state — the point of calculation, selection, or decision.

The final frame is always the output. Clean. Direct.

The storyboard structure remains identical across all twelve episodes — same duration, same pacing, same moment of activation — because every mechanism serves the same underlying function: reducing complexity into a usable result.

NODUM — Storyboard EP.01: Remainder
08 — Storyboard — EP.01: Remainder
NODUM / Underneath  ·  90 sec  ·  Score only
NOT
MAGIC.
MATH.
How diffusion models subtract noise to generate images. 90 seconds. No voiceover. Score only.
Episode01 / 12
Duration0:00 – 1:30
Format16:9 · --style raw
MechanismDiffusion / Noise Subtraction
MusicScore only — no voiceover
Act I Opening / 0:00–0:15 5 frames
00:00:00 T=100
Black / Wordmark
fades in
Full static erupts
00:00:03 T=100
Full static — T=100
Pure noise / Counter
NODUM 00:00:05 T=67
Particles thin — T=67
Subtracting
NODUM 00:00:10 T=34
Noise nearly gone — T=34
Remainder
NODUM 00:00:14 T=0
Form resolved — T=0
Image emerged / Hold 3s
Act I
0:00–0:15
Black frame. The UNDERNEATH wordmark fades in at 40% opacity. Full static erupts — pure noise, wall to wall. The counter appears bottom right in Signal red: T=100. Over fifteen seconds, particles thin. The form is barely visible at T=60, recognizable at T=25, fully resolved at T=0. Score rises with resolution.
Act II Mechanism / 0:15–1:05 Iterative loop
Loop
description
Step counter increments 100→0. Each step: noise field re-evaluated, remainder calculated, subtraction applied. The emerging form is barely visible at T=60, recognizable at T=25, fully resolved at T=0. Score rises with resolution. Hold on final frame.
Act III Resolution / 1:05–1:30 Lockup
Closing
sequence
T=0. Wordmark at full opacity. Hold 3 seconds. Cut to black. UNDERNEATH title card. No voice. No explanation. The viewer discovers the system.
Direction Notes
01No voiceover. Score only — minimal, building. Max Richter / Nils Frahm territory.
02Counter typeface: IBM Plex Mono Light. Small. Signal red. Bottom right. Never intrudes on the geometry.
03The emerging form is the NODUM wordmark but this is never explained. The viewer discovers it.
04Final hold: 3 seconds. Wordmark at full opacity. Then cut to black. UNDERNEATH title card.
05Noise must feel genuinely random — not patterned. Each particle has independent opacity variance.
06Aspect ratio 16:9. --style raw. No camera movement. Static frame throughout.
NODUM  ·  Underneath Campaign  ·  Storyboard EP.01  ·  Sam Zavieh CD
samzavieh.com

OOH / Print

Large format. White ground. A single diagrammatic still from the film series at full bleed, cropped to the moment of resolution. The Signal red element — the intersecting sphere, ranked node, or shortest path — sits near center.

No headline. Only the mechanism label and episode number in IBM Plex Mono at 9px, bottom left. NODUM wordmark bottom right.

The work is designed to operate with minimal explanation.

NODUM — Underneath OOH + Print
04 — OOH Campaign
NODUM
THE SHORTEST
PATH ISN'T
GUESSED.
Start node. Calculate distance to all neighbors. Pick the shortest. The path isn't guessed — it's proven.
Dijkstra
NODUM
NOT
MAGIC.
MATH.
Pure noise resolves into signal. Not by chance. By subtraction, iteration, and proof.
Remainder
Transit Cards — 11" × 28" / MTA New York City Subway
NODUM
Public Key
YOU CAN
LOCK IT.
ONLY I
CAN OPEN IT.
The math only works in one direction.
UNDERNEATH
NODUM
PageRank
NOT WHAT
YOU KNOW.
WHO KNOWS
YOU.
Every link is a vote. Not all votes are equal.
UNDERNEATH
NODUM
Bloom Filter
PROBABLY
YES.
DEFINITELY
NO.
Never wrong on negatives. Space-efficient uncertainty.
UNDERNEATH
05 — Print Executions
NODUM
EVERY
LINK IS
A VOTE.
Not all votes are equal. A link from a high-ranking page is worth more. The algorithm iterates until scores stabilize.
NODUM
FOUR
SPHERES.
ONE
POINT.
Your phone receives signals from four satellites. Four spheres intersect at one point: your location.
NODUM
THE NOISE
WAS SIGNAL.
Every complex signal is a sum of simple ones. The transform that turns noise into frequency.
NODUM
NOT
MAGIC.
MATH.
Each iteration subtracts noise based on what the model learned. The image emerges. Not magic. Math.
NODUM  ·  Underneath Campaign  ·  OOH + Print  ·  Sam Zavieh CD  · 

Microsite

A single-page case study built as a functional artifact. The film grid presents all twelve episodes as a browsable archive — four-column, hairline-bordered, each card opening a full-viewport lightbox containing the diagrammatic still, mechanism brief, and campaign metadata.

The interface follows the same logic as the campaign itself: Void background, Bone typography, Signal reserved for active states.

No template language.

The microsite demonstrates how the system operates across scale — from a 9px mono label to an 88px display headline to a full-browser image.

Self-initiated campaign platform exploring how visual systems can make computational infrastructure understandable at human scale.

Developed the campaign platform, identity system, motion language, editorial framework, and digital experience across all executions.