Andrew Fiouzi
Associate creative director / writer / storyteller

AndrewFiouzi.

From roadside motels to tech newsrooms to the AI frontier.

Explore the work ↓
A little context / 01

I started out asking questions for a living. Now I use the answers to build brands, shape voices, and make ideas people want to spend time with.

Selected
work.

Creative direction & storytelling / 01—03
01 /

Giving Gemini a voice.

I helped build Google Gemini’s social presence from scratch, one surprisingly useful, occasionally weird idea at a time. As creative lead, I introduced persona building to the process, developing profiles of the people who might use Gemini and the situations they might use it in. Those recognizable experiences shaped the work.

How I approach it / 01A new feature is a starting point. I look for the moment it might slip into someone’s life, then build an idea around it.
2M+ followers across Gemini social channels
Explore the work

I lead creative strategy, creator concepts, and scripts for new products and capabilities. I start with distinct audience personas: who might use the technology, what they need, and what would make an idea resonate with them.

I also develop prompting methods and creative playbooks, and lead training to help teams experiment with generative AI.

Google Gemini at Monks
Creative direction
Social & creator strategy
2024—Present
Case study /

Finding a voice for Grow with Google.

The channel had something to say. The problem was, we didn’t know enough about the people we were saying it to. When I joined Grow with Google as associate creative director, the voice was uncertain, the creative was suffering, and the content wasn’t performing. So I went looking for the audience.

From conversation to creative

I attended roundtables with Google AI Professional Certificate graduates and asked about their work, their lives, and what they actually did with the skills they learned. Their answers gave me a clearer picture of who we were talking to. I redirected the channel’s creative around those people, structuring and directing assets drawn from their experiences and giving the audience something recognizable to connect with.

Make the first step easier

For people curious about building an app but unsure where to begin, we developed big, bold prompts they could screenshot or copy and try for themselves. The creative gave them a way into vibe coding: start with a sentence, experiment, and see what they could build.

Ready for everyone else?

Creative direction turned app deployment into a practical checklist for testing, preparing, and sharing an app.

View on LinkedIn ↗

Make AI Work for You

A Route 66 road trip gave a small business AI workshop an invitation to learn in person or on their own schedule.

View on LinkedIn ↗
Grow with Google
Associate creative director
Creative direction
LinkedIn & storytelling
02 /

Leading the newsroom at dot.LA.

At dot.LA, I ran a newsroom covering the collision of technology, entertainment, and Los Angeles. I set the editorial direction, guided writers and contributors, and grew the audience while keeping a close eye on the stories we told.

How I approach it / 02In a newsroom covering technology and entertainment, I watched for the small shifts that hinted at a bigger story.
2.5M monthly unique visitors, up from 250K in three months
A day with the artists behind deepfake Tom Cruise ↗A day with the team behind Metaphysic took me into the uncanny world of synthetic media.
Can an algorithm bring back serendipity? ↗Over dinner and a night out, I met the founders using AI to bring strangers together in real life.
The artists imagining an AI-powered Hollywood ↗From Pinocchio to independent filmmaking, I explored how artists were experimenting with AI.
Explore the work

As managing editor, I oversaw editorial strategy, daily operations, writers, and contributors. Our newsroom covered the emerging generative AI conversation, including creative tools and the people reshaping filmmaking and media.

dot.LA
Editorial leadership
Audience growth
2022—2023
03 /

Stories from the edges.

I spent six years reporting on subcultures, technology, masculinity, and the stranger corners of contemporary life.

How I approach it / 03Go somewhere. Talk to people. Pay attention to the details that make a place unlike anywhere else.
750+ stories published at MEL Magazine
How the all-American motel became a last resort ↗A reporting trip through roadside motels introduced me to families for whom they were a last lifeline.
A day at the beach on a disappearing sea ↗In Bombay Beach, I met the people living alongside the shrinking Salton Sea.
An oral history of hard-shell tacos ↗With help from a food historian and others, I traced the Mexican roots of an American fast-food staple.
Explore the work

I documented families living in roadside motels during the 2019 housing crisis and wrote an award-winning profile of Bombay Beach, exploring ecological collapse and the unlikely cultural renaissance along the Salton Sea.

MEL Magazine
Features & reporting
2016—2022

A little more context.

Creative direction

I help teams find the idea, develop it, and carry it through. From setting a voice to shaping a script, I bring an editorial eye to the work and make room for the unexpected.

People first

Before there’s a concept, there’s a person. I build audience personas and explore the situations they might find themselves in, giving the creative a more recognizable place to begin.

Experimentation

New tools invite new ways of working. I use AI to explore perspectives, test ideas, and help creative teams get more comfortable making things they haven’t made before.

About.

Portrait of Andrew Fiouzi

I started my career as a reporter, asking questions, following strange leads, and occasionally spending the night somewhere I didn't book in advance.

At MEL Magazine, that curiosity took me into roadside motels and the community around the Salton Sea. At dot.LA, it took me into a newsroom covering technology and the emerging world of AI.

Now, as an associate creative director, I help shape Google Gemini’s voice and develop ideas around the people who use it: what they care about, their hopes, and what might make them stop scrolling.