Hope is Real

with Jazz Thornton
ZM Podcast Network

“Hope is Real is a Podcast to help you feel a little less alone, a bit more inspired and a lot more hopeful”.

While I was apart of the creative team at New Zealand Media and Entertainment, we were increasingly developing visual identities and collateral for digital audio podcasts.

Hope is Real with Jazz Thornton was the first podcast I worked on at NZME, where I played a key role in bringing it to life and promoting it alongside the ZM team, internal marketing, iHeartRadio, and Jazz herself.

This project was particularly meaningful to me, as Jazz’s work in the mental health space is incredibly important—helping to normalise and
de-stigmatise conversations that can often be difficult to have.

Credits
Ross Flahive,
ZM Content Director Jennifer Pryor, Senior Marketing Manager – Audio
Jacquline Davis, Marketing Manager – Audio
Xanthe Williams - Creative Manager

Joseph Senior
- Image retouching

Helen Scott & Sabah Rahman - Roll out

Project Name
Hope is Real
with Jazz Thornton

Role
Art Direction &
Graphic Design
Development
Image selection

Year
24/01/2023

Development

With Jazz providing a clear and detailed mood board, I was able to source the exact imagery she envisioned from Getty and adapt it into a soft yet impactful concept—one that reflects the podcast’s deeply important yet sensitive subject matter.

During the development phase (shown above), we initially used a placeholder image of Jazz to determine the placement of the abstract "head" vector illustration in the background. Once the final photos were taken in-house, my team member, Joseph Senior, handled color grading and light retouching before preparing the images for use.

Since podcast tiles appear quite small on mobile devices, this project was my first experience in carefully balancing typography, logos, and imagery to ensure clarity at a reduced size. Through stakeholder feedback, I refined the typography and layout to create the final artwork that best represents the podcast’s message.