About

I'm an analytical creative who got into the rooms by building things, not by talking about building things.

Engineer and sound engineer by training. I think in signal flows: input, process, output, and where quality is lost. Most of what looks like a brand problem is a signal problem somewhere upstream.

London · 2026

The solution is the most beautiful response to the problem. Aesthetics without story is decoration. Lived experience is the only real moat.

Origin

Cardboard Creative started as event videography. Then it drifted.

I started shooting events because I was already in the rooms. Weddings. Cultural nights. Community work. The kit was the same kit I used for sound, more or less. People asked, I said yes. Word got around.

COVID arrived and nobody was running events. The business had to become something else, fast. So it became reactive. Whatever came in, I'd take. Photography one month. Podcast production the next. The occasional brand job, mostly because someone trusted me to figure it out.

That kept the lights on. It also did the thing I now warn clients about. The work was good. The story underneath had drifted. I'd built a do‑whatever business that nobody could explain in a sentence, including me.

Signal flow diagram: in → process → refine → out

How I think

Brands are signal chains. Most problems are upstream of where you think.

Sound engineering teaches you to start at the source. If the input is wrong, no amount of processing fixes it downstream. You go back and check where quality is actually lost.

That's how I read a business. Whatever a client thinks the problem is, the first job is to follow the signal backwards until we find where the loss is. It's almost never where they thought.

The honest bit

I had the problem I now solve. That's not a weakness. It's the credential.

The reason I can spot brand drift in someone else's business in twenty minutes is that I lived inside it for years. I know what it looks like to be busy and still not have a story you can repeat. I know how to drift into a business that won't scale because every job has been a custom job.

Recognising it took longer than it should have. Fixing it meant making three decisions that felt brutal at the time. Stop selling anything I wasn't the best person to deliver. Productise what was repeatable. Put my own name on the front door of the consulting work and own the accountability for it.

What I do for clients now is the same operation I had to run on my own business. I'm not selling theory. I'm selling something I had to do for myself and got right the second time.

What I run

Four brands. One operating system.

Each business sits inside the studio model. Different products, different audiences, the same way of working: clarity first, specialists assembled to the brief, one point of accountability.

Consultancy · Personal brand

Kev Tanna.

Brand clarity and positioning for founders. The workshop, the retainer, and the network behind it. This site is the front door.

Live · taking founder enquiries

Studio entity · Operating company

Cardboard Creative

The studio the work runs through. Where briefs are sequenced, specialists are assembled, and the invoice is issued from. Operating since the start.

Operating · 8+ years

Studio venture · Co‑founded

Podcast Foundry

Productised podcast production for founders. Three tiers, transparent pricing, real commercial outcomes. Co‑founded with Priyesh Pankhania.

Live · Q2 2024 onwards

Imprint · Documentary

The Open Journal

Documentary‑style personal films. Long form, slow, made in service of the subject, not the algorithm. The imprint I make work under when the work is the point.

Imprint · selective commissions

How I work

A short list. Not rules. Just what I've found is true.

If you've read this far, you'll recognise most of these. I keep them on the wall above the desk so I don't drift again.

Say the thing.

The uncomfortable observation is usually the one worth ten meetings. I'll say it in the workshop, not three weeks later in a deck.

Start at the source.

If the input is wrong, polishing the output is expensive. I'll always check upstream before I touch what you brought me.

Numbers as evidence, not flex.

Results are reported plain, in the units they belong in. If a number can't be defended in a room of skeptics, it doesn't appear.

One invoice, one point of accountability.

You don't need five suppliers. You need one person who owns the outcome and the right specialists turning up when they're needed.

If you've read this far

You probably already know what's drifted.

Workshop's four hours, fixed price, written report at the end. If we're not the right fit afterwards, you keep the clarity and we both move on.

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