YeRoc Magazine

Academic Portfolio Project: A Focus on Men's Mental Health

This project, completed during my Sixth Form studies, centered on the critical and timely issue of men's mental health. Designed as a three-page magazine feature, the entire piece was strategically released to coincide with Movember, providing a powerful context for dialogue and awareness. The work not only received high marks but also served as a foundational piece for launching my creative portfolio.

Conceptual Design and Execution

The core concept involved using the promotion of a featured artist as a narrative vehicle to capstone the broader discussion on male well-being. This allowed the feature to maintain an engaging, lifestyle-oriented aesthetic while delivering meaningful content.

The photography and location strategy were integral to grounding the subject matter in the urban environment of London. Shoots were conducted across diverse, everyday locations—from the bustling transport links of the Tube and the lively atmosphere of festivals to the specific green spaces of Greenwich. This deliberate choice aimed to demonstrate that conversations about mental health are relevant everywhere and must be integrated into daily life.

The "Ye Roc" Future Vision

Recognizing the crucial nature of this topic, I plan to continue developing this area of publishing. My future work will focus on the concept of "Ye Roc," an acronym designed to promote positive self-talk and self-promotion specifically targeted at young men.

This emphasis on internal resilience resonates deeply with my own recent experience of transitioning from a small-town educational environment into a large company setting. This phase of life—moving out of structured school systems and into the complexities of the "real world"—presents significant challenges to mental and emotional health. The "You Roc" concept is designed to help men cultivate a strong inner dialogue, fostering self-acceptance and confidence necessary to navigate career pressures, new social dynamics, and the inherent hardships of adult transition. This work aims to shift the narrative from focusing solely on crises to promoting preventative and constructive internal wellness strategies.

20% PODCAST

About the Podcast

The 20% Podcast" is an internal Google podcast series designed to bridge the generational gap in understanding evolving market trends and company-wide initiatives. Each episode provides a fresh, younger-generation perspective on recent company news, product launches, and strategic announcements, specifically through the lens of Gen Z Googlers.

Our Value Proposition

The podcast serves as a unique internal resource, translating the nuances of the younger generation's viewpoint into actionable professional insights. We aim to empower Google's professional teams—from Sales and Marketing to Product and Strategy—by offering direct, relevant interpretations of how global and internal events resonate with the Gen Z demographic.

How People Utilised Our Insights

"The 20% Podcast" delivers unfiltered, strategic Gen Z intelligence directly to Google teams, ensuring market relevance and client success.

Our episodes are a vital tool utilized by professionals across the company to:

• Future-Proof Client Strategy: Incorporate authentic Gen Z feedback to develop compelling, relevant, and persuasive proposals that accurately reflect the target audience's values and media consumption.

• Optimize Audience Reach: Gain the qualitative insights needed to refine targeting and develop more effective campaigns by understanding Gen Z's digital behavior and decision-making process.

• Identify Growth Opportunities: Proactively pinpoint shifts in cultural trends and technology, helping teams advise clients on emerging markets and stay ahead of the curve.

• Build Internal Empathy: Foster cross-generational understanding within Google, ensuring company strategy is informed by diverse, next-generation perspectives.

This podcast is the critical link for Google and its partners to remain at the forefront of consumer engagement. We've explored key industry questions like:

Is AI good enough for Gen Z?

Is long-form replacing short-form content?

Are content creators the new Hollywood?

SOME PROMOTIONAL VIDEOS WE USED FOR THE POD

VIVID

VIVID is a personal, multi-faceted creative campaign designed to hone advanced AI prompting and generative art skills. The project translates globally recognized cultural days into visually stunning, conceptually rich digital content, demonstrating mastery in photorealism, material transformation, and artistic style transfer and bringing elements in to life.

1. World Chess Day: Premier League Strategy

Concept: Blending the strategic depth of chess with the intense brand identity and rivalry of major English Premier League football teams. This series required the seamless integration of high-fidelity team colors and crests onto custom-designed chess pieces.

Prompting Focus: Material integrity and brand integration. I engineered prompts to demand high-detail surfaces, such as 'Polished Marble,' 'Aged Brass,' and 'Engraved Logo,' all rendered under specific 'Studio Lighting' to achieve perfect photorealism.

Edward Hopper Rememberance: Reimagined Spaces

Concept: Bringing the atmospheric solitude and dramatic lighting of Edward Hopper’s famous paintings into a tangible, hyper-detailed digital reality. The goal was to maintain his signature mood while introducing the fidelity of a modern 3D render.

Prompting Focus: Atmosphere and style transfer. This required deep control over light and emotion, using terms such as 'Chiaroscuro lighting,' 'Geometric solitude,' and 'Hopperesque color palette' to capture the artist's unique feeling within a photorealistic, navigable space.

nighthawks (1942)

office at night (1940)

New York restaurant (1922)

BURST

This AI generative art project focuses on the creative potential found in the contrast between simplicity and complexity, using a single, unremarkable object—a plain cardboard box—as the foundational anchor for a series of explosive, environmental transformations. The project explores how advanced AI prompting can instantaneously deconstruct an object and rebuild its surroundings in wildly different, conceptually rich contexts.

Environmental Extremes – Testing Photorealism and Materiality

The initial phase used the basic cardboard box image to test the AI's ability to render the object's surrounding environment, forcing the box to conform to extreme, detailed contexts.

• Jungle: Generating a dense, humid environment where the box appears weathered, damp, and overgrown with moss or vines, testing organic texture generation.

• Arctic: Placing the box in a stark, frozen landscape, focusing on the effects of harsh light, ice crystallization, and snow buildup, testing reflective surfaces and extreme contrast.

• Desert: Rendering a dry, sun-baked scene with intense shadow and sand texture, exploring arid environments and diffused light.

Technical Goal: To ensure the cardboard box itself retained its basic form while convincingly taking on the subtle material wear and environmental integration necessary for photorealism in each extreme setting.