The studio

The business end and the art end.

Kay runs one, Taz draws the other.

his photography really is terrible.
Kay
The Business End

Kay

I’m the business end of the studio. Twenty years in marketing and communications: newspaper editing, PR, client-side marketing, then leading client work inside one of the world’s biggest agency networks, across the Middle East and the US. The brands ran from banking and telecom to fashion and coffee, including a global burger brand that rules over a certain kingdom. You’ve eaten there.

My job is getting inside your customer’s head: knowing what they want to see, hear, and read before they can tell you themselves. At TNK I lead strategy and the commercial side. I’ll tell you when something is wrong and bring the number that proves it. My own photography is terrible. My eye for yours is not.

Taz and I have also built and run a brand of our own, so I know what marketing feels like when it’s your own money on the line. These days I work from Noblesville, Indiana, for businesses a short drive away instead of a long flight.

ask about the paper weight.
Taz
The Art End

Taz

I’m the art end of the studio. I’ve been a buyer, a designer, and a brand manager for global brands in footwear, surfwear, and fashion retail, and I’ve worked inside a clothing manufacturer in Mumbai, where you learn how things actually get made. Then Kay and I built our own: a clothing boutique we ran for seven years. I did the buying, the books, the shipping, the windows, and the marketing, and I learned what a brand costs when you’re the one paying for it. We closed it on our own terms and brought the lessons here.

I drew the TNK monogram by hand, in ballpoint, and I draw the doodles that live around this site. The work I love sits where culture and history meet what’s current: the right color instead of the almost-right one, the weight of the paper, the pattern with a story in it. When something doesn’t feel right I’ll say so. Then I’ll show you what I’d make instead.

the studio, off the clock.
Kay and Taz on a beach seawall, their kid between them

Start with a Brand Checkup.

An hour with both founders, then a written report: what is working, what is broken, and the three fixes that matter most, in order. The report is yours to keep, whatever you decide next.

Start a Brand Checkupnow beats someday: every month this waits, your work undersells itself.