Creative Storyteller · Sport, Content & Design
My next chapter starts with everything that brought me here.
- UK
- Texas
- Miami
Football took me from the UK to two years in Texas and a year in Miami. I was playing the game I love alongside people chasing the same dream, while building a life far from home.
Adapting every day and meeting people with different experiences changed how I saw the world and what I wanted from my future.
Through podcast production and magazine design, I discovered how much I enjoy turning ideas into something a team can build on. Now I want to bring that experience into sports content, advertising and editorial design, while exploring what AI can help me create.
Selected work
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01Open projectBehind the mic
Studio preparation, soundboard and creative input for a class podcast.
- 02Open project
The Roaring Times
Managing Editor. Layout, assembly and my own cover and contributor pages.
03Open projectFootball editorial
Two posters, refined from my early drafts and fact-checked.
04Open projectStria One campaign
Concept and creative direction for a fictional football boot, in an AI-assisted silent film.
05Open projectCopy Nothing — Miami
Event film · 1:19
06Open projectInteractive adverts
Concept adverts I designed and built.
Behind the mic
Lions Country Podcast · Broadcasting class, Florida Memorial University, 2024
I worked behind the scenes so each conversation could start ready and sound right.
- Studio preparation
- Before recording I set up the seating, microphones and room, then checked everything was ready.
- Live sound
- I ran the soundboard across our recorded sessions, balancing microphone and headphone levels as people spoke.
- Shared creative planning
- I contributed topics and questions alongside the class, and occasionally asked interview questions from a UK perspective.
- Learning from others
- Older students taught me how post-production works, though I did little of the final editing. I also suggested tighter edits and university-news breaks. They stayed as ideas because of workload, which showed me how plans need to fit the time a team has.
Four episodes
Real Political :Jasmin, Kamesha, and Tom with City Commissioner of North Miami Beach Daniela Jean.
Lions Country Podcast: Global Voices at Florida Memorial University, finale podcast.
DEAR MY HBCU
DEAR MY HBCU: Finale podcast
Episode artwork was created by classmates. Episodes are published on the Lions Country Podcast YouTube channel.
The Roaring Times
Special Edition 2025 · Design and Presenting class, Florida Memorial University
As Managing Editor, I brought everyone’s work together into one publication.
- Managing Editor
- I handled layout and assembly across the work submitted for the issue.
- Pages I designed
- The cover, Inside The Roaring Times and Meet The Team.
- Classmates’ work
- Classmates wrote the articles and designed their own spreads.
- Cover photograph
- By a fellow student. Name to be confirmed.
Selected pages
Four pages from the issue, photographed from the printed copy. This is not the full publication.
Cover
Cover design by me. Photograph by a fellow student, name to be confirmed.
Inside The Roaring Times
Page design by me.
Meet The Team
Page design by me.
FMU Mens Soccer
Writing by Ahaan Malkani, the featured student. I helped with layout, colours and content arrangement.
Reading one page
- The title and lion hold the top of the page, with space between them.
- Sections sit in two columns, so the eye can scan each side.
- Thin orange rules carry the structure, picking up the lion’s colour.
- A blue band closes the page and carries the credit.
Retrospective visual analysis, drawn over the printed page for this portfolio. It describes the finished page, not my original intentions or working file.
Football editorial
Two posters · Early drafts in Canva, refined and fact-checked for this portfolio
One match that defied its numbers, and one position played two ways.
Possession isn’t everything
Burnley 2–0 Liverpool, 20 August 2016. Liverpool had the ball. Burnley had the goals.
Two generations. Two approaches.
A comparison of how Achraf Hakimi and Dani Alves played the same position in two defined periods.
From draft to finished poster
The early drafts
I first made both posters in Canva, from my own ideas, web research and my experience of playing the game. AI helped tidy the layout, not the wording, and I made the final cuts.
The later refinement
While building this portfolio, I rebuilt both with AI assistance. Match figures were checked against Premier League data, claims were traced to sources, and anything unsupported was removed. The posters above are this later work, not my original drafts.
Design decisions
Possession isn’t everything
- The headline leads with the contradiction, so the statistics read as evidence.
- Joined bars split each match total. Pass completion is a rate, so each team has its own 0–100% bar.
- One mark per shot replaces the invented shot map, showing outcomes without implying positions.
Two generations. Two approaches.
- The headline replaces “versus”, because this compares approaches rather than ranking players.
- Evidence sits inside each tactical explanation, so the figures do not read as a head-to-head.
- Typography carries the poster, as no cleared photography is available.
Sources and definitions
Possession isn’t everything
- All figures come from the Premier League match data, read 2 November 2026. Premier League match centre
- Possession discrepancy: the match data gives Liverpool 80.4%, while a Premier League article gives 80.6%. The poster uses 80.4%, so every figure comes from one source. Premier League article
- Pass completion is accurate passes divided by total passes. Total shots includes blocked shots.
- The match data used has no shot positions, so the poster shows no shot map.
Two generations. Two approaches.
- Hakimi: PSG at the FIFA Club World Cup 2025, from FIFA’s analysis of 12 July 2025, before the final on 13 July. His ranking is among PSG players, for the tournament to that point. FIFA Training Centre analysis
- Alves: Barcelona, 2008 to 2016, from FC Barcelona’s records. FC Barcelona statistics FC Barcelona profile
- The periods, sources and measures differ, so the evidence cannot be compared directly.
- The diagrams are interpretive tactical illustrations, not tracking or event data.
Compare with the early drafts
Kept only to show the process. These drafts contain factual errors and are not verified analysis. Club crests and player photographs have been removed from these copies, as no permission is recorded.
Early draft: match poster
Early draft. Not verified analysis.
- Wrong winner, venue and scorers corrected
- Pass totals and pass completion recalculated
- Invented shot map removed
- Sources added
Early draft: player comparison
Early draft. Not verified analysis.
- Versus framing replaced with two approaches
- Ages and the undefined “prime” label removed
- Periods defined and claims sourced
- Invented heatmaps replaced with labelled illustrations
Again.
Stria One campaign
Independent campaign concept · Fictional football boot · Silent film, 35 seconds
A campaign for Stria One, a football boot designed around one idea: control is repeated.
Self-initiated concept. Stria One is a fictional product, with no real brand, player or client involved.
The idea
Brief
Make a quiet, physical film for players who train on their own, roughly 16 to 25. Craft leads, and the product arrives last, composed and still. No performance claims, real brands or players.
Control is repeated
Every touch wears a ring into the ground. Thousands of touches leave a contour map, and that map becomes the boot. The product’s shape comes from the campaign’s idea, so the film and the boot tell one story.
From turf to ridges
The film’s turning point happens in about five seconds, in one continuous move.
14.9s
Touches wear rings
Each landing of the ball wears another ring into the turf, until the worn patch reads as a contour map.
17.9s
One centre
The light narrows and the rings glow on black, tightening around a single centre.
19.9s
The boot rises
The boot rises toe first from that centre, and the floor lines run on across its forefoot.
21.1s
Lines become ridges
The lines settle on to the boot’s real contour ridges, and raking light reveals them as relief.
Credits
Thomas Bailey
Concept development, creative direction, selection and review. I developed the idea, directed each revision and decided what made the final cut.
AI-assisted production
I set the creative direction and reviewed each revision. Claude generated the code for the 3D boot, materials, lighting, animation, rendering and storyboard layout. The visuals were rendered from the 3D scene without photography or an AI image generator.
Where it stands
- Stria One is a fictional football boot campaign I developed as an independent portfolio project.
Event film
Copy Nothing — Miami
In December 2024, I attended Jaguar’s Copy Nothing event in Miami alongside friends from Florida Memorial University’s magazine and photography team. An invitation through Instagram brought us into a creative opportunity to contribute ideas and experience the event.
The film
I filmed what caught my attention throughout the evening—from the reveal of Jaguar’s new concept car to Skepta performing on stage and the atmosphere around us. I brought that footage together in CapCut to create this 1 minute 19 second edit.
At the event
Event footage
A clip from the evening at the branded backdrop. It is separate from the finished edit.
Filmed and edited by Thomas Bailey. Independently created event film.
Interactive adverts
Interactive product adverts I concept, design and build, with scroll-driven storytelling, responsive layouts and accessible interaction.
THOMAS / 01
Winter, in a different shade.
A scroll-driven campaign for a fictional winter drink, where one plum can carries the story from frosted white to deep plum and back.
Fictional beverage brand. Packaging and interactive advert concept by Thomas Bailey. AI-generated product imagery. Not available for purchase.
Joseph Joseph
Everything clicks
An interactive advert for a nesting food container set.
Sekonda
Time, considered.
A refined, scroll-led watch advert focused on design detail.
Kodak
Some moments deserve paper.
An interactive camera advert. Press the shutter and watch your photo print.
Independent concepts by Thomas Bailey. Not made for, commissioned or endorsed by the brands shown. Brand names and product images belong to their owners.
Journey
August 2022 to May 2025 · Football scholarship
Three years of study and play in the US on a football scholarship: two at Hill College in Texas, then one at Florida Memorial University in Miami.
- UKHome
- TexasHill College · 2022 to 2024
- MiamiFlorida Memorial · 2024 to 2025
Texas · Hill College
Region 5 champions
In 2023 our team won the NJCAA Region 5 Division I men’s soccer title.
I joined Hill College in August 2022 and studied and played there for two years. In the 2023 season I started every game at left-back.
That season I was also named a Region 5 Men’s Soccer Honorable Mention for 2023–24, an individual honour separate from the team title.
Miami · Florida Memorial University
A final year in Miami
In August 2024 I transferred my credits to Florida Memorial University for my third year, playing football and studying until May 2025.
Alongside football, I joined the Broadcasting class podcast, preparing the studio and running the soundboard, and was Managing Editor of the Design and Presenting class magazine, The Roaring Times.
Behind the micThe Roaring Times
One challenge, three frames
What it gave me
Three years far from home meant adapting every day, to new teams, coaches and classrooms. It also showed me how much I enjoy the work behind a shared result, on the pitch and in the studio.
How I work
Working style · Project decisions · AI
I start with a rough version, see what works and refine it.
A rough first version gives everyone something real to react to. Then I review it for the audience, keep what works and cut what doesn’t. These are decisions from the work in this portfolio.
Football posters
- First
- My first versions came from my own ideas, web research and my experience of playing, made quickly in Canva.
- Then
- When I revisited the posters, I found errors in the match result and removed a shot map I couldn’t verify. I checked the published figures against the source data.
The Roaring Times
- First
- As Managing Editor I brought together spreads that classmates had designed separately.
- Then
- I worked on the layout and assembly so the issue read as one magazine, and designed the cover and the Inside The Roaring Times and Meet The Team pages.
Behind the mic
- First
- Alongside running the soundboard, I suggested tighter cuts and a segment with university updates.
- Then
- With the class’s workload they weren’t produced. It taught me to shape ideas around the time a team actually has.
Stria One
- First
- I started with three campaign routes and a 7-second test film, then developed one: control is repeated.
- Then
- I shortened the contour sequence and brought the rings to one centre so the transition into the boot’s ridges was easier to follow. I reviewed short render samples before committing to the full film and chose the final product still as the poster.
How I use AI
I use AI to produce and refine work faster, while the idea, judgement and final decisions stay with me.
- What I do
- Research, the brief, the audience, the idea, choosing between options, reviewing every result and deciding what is cut.
- What AI does
- Layout adjustments, code, and production work such as 3D modelling, rendering and animation, under my direction.
- Football posters: AI tidied my Canva layouts, not the wording, and later helped me rebuild and fact-check them.
- My earlier portfolio, built with free AI tools, where I organised the content into selectable sections.
- Stria One, where AI wrote the code that rendered every frame and I directed the concept and revisions.
- This portfolio, built in reviewed stages with Claude Code. I set the direction and facts, reviewed each stage and decided what changed.
Where I want to take it
I want to bring this approach to a sports media or brand team, using AI to turn early campaign ideas into prototypes people can respond to.
I’m looking to bring my experience in podcast production, editorial design and campaign development to a sports media or sports brand team.
I’m open to permanent junior roles, internships, freelance projects and collaborations.
Based in Berkshire and open to remote and hybrid work, as well as roles in London and within commuting distance.