/about — the studio

I kept opening Egyptian websites and finding the same one.

So I started building the other kind. YMS Studio is one person in Cairo who designs it, writes the code, and ships it. You explain your business once, to the person who builds it.

The whole story is below
/01 — the pattern

Same template. Different logo.

Factories. Clinics. Firms doing real numbers. I would open their sites and get the same page every time: a stock handshake, four services in four boxes, a contact form that reached nobody. It was not bad taste. It was nobody deciding anything.

Eleven off the same template. One that someone actually designed.

/02 — the comparison

Then I would open something built abroad.

Different craft entirely. Type that had been chosen on purpose. Motion that meant something. Pages that opened fast and did the selling on their own. The difference was never the tools. Everyone has the same tools, mostly for free.

It was not budget either. I have watched Egyptian companies pay more for a template than a firm in Berlin pays for something made for them.

The difference was the standard. A low ceiling that everyone had quietly agreed to: a company should have a site, not a good one. Once that is the expectation, nobody asks for more, so nobody builds more.

I never agreed to it.

A site built in Cairo should not have to be graded on a curve. That is the entire brief.

/03 — how that shows up in the work

Four things I do not compromise on.

01

One person, start to finish

No salesperson in the first meeting and a junior on the build. Ask for a change and it reaches whoever built the page and knows why it works that way, because that is me. You will never hear "let me check with the team."

02

You own all of it

The code is yours, the domain in your name, the hosting in your account. Move all of it to anyone, any time, without asking me. I would rather you stay because the work holds up than because you are stuck.

03

Few clients at a time

I do not scale headcount. That is a limit, and it is the point. The work gets the attention it needs instead of whatever is left over after four other projects.

04

Built to still work in three years

No page builders, no plugin stacks that rot. IGBS has been running since launch in five languages with full Arabic right-to-left, and has never needed a rebuild.

/04 — who builds it
"Your website is your address online. And an address defines who you are."

I am a designer who learned to code because handing off a design and watching it come back wrong got old. I work from Cairo in Arabic and English, and I build both properly. Arabic right-to-left is not a translation plugin bolted on at the end. It is a layout you draw from the first day.

Youssef Mahmoud Soliman Founder — YMS Studio, Cairo
/05 — before you send anything

I am not the right choice for every project.

an agency will serve you better

If you need volume and speed

Twenty landing pages for a campaign next week, or a brochure site live in three days. I will tell you so instead of taking the work and letting you down.

this is the work I do

If you are building something you mean to keep

A store that has to survive a real season. A site that carries your company's name and meets your clients before you do. Something you will look at in three years and still be glad about.

Tell me what needs building.

Send the problem, not a spec. I will tell you honestly whether I am the right person to build it, and if I am not, who is.