Virans is a book comprised of illustrations, hand-written text, and digital elements The book was conceived as an encapsulation of the broad social changes brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. With a unique art style utilizing distorted human forms, complex line patterns, pointillism, and flat compositions, each of the book's 15 spreads represent an issue observed during the pandemic. These issues include isolation, political concerns, conspiracy theories, and the overall human toll of the pandemic.

Especially during the current COVID-19 pandemic and age of social unrest in the United States, there has been an increasing need for comfort, yet the idea of comfort is quite vague and rarely elaborated upon. To simplify the idea of comfort and communicate the ideas around it effectively, I am defining comfort as a subset of escapism in which a person escapes to reduce or alleviate feelings of grief or distress. As companies rush to comfort their customers in this current state of uncertainty, marketers are pressed to identify people’s insecurities and comfort them without coming off as insensitive or trite. Current comfort marketing focuses on inspiring nostalgia in its customers, having them recall previous positive experiences or feelings to comfort them. Nostalgic marketing techniques may ease mild grief in some cases, but using them to alleviate severe distress probably will not be as effective, and has contributed to several seemingly out-of-touch “COVID-19 era” commercials.<br/>When addressing comfort, marketers should understand the type and hierarchy of comfort that they are catering to. Not all comforts are equal, in that some comforts make us feel better than others and some do not comfort us at all. A better understanding of how and why comforts change among different individuals, and possibly being able to predict the comfort preference based on a product or service, will help marketers market their goods and services more effectively. By diversifying and specializing comfort marketing using this hierarchical method, marketers will be able to more significantly reach their customers during “uncertain times.”

The world has been greatly impacted by the global pandemic. One of the most substantial shifts was within the workplace and the emergence of a virtual working environment. It has been proven that Generation Z is leaning towards a hybrid working environment for their future careers. According to a recent AT&T survey of employees and business leaders at large U.S. companies, about 86% of employees would prefer hybrid work (Kelly, 2022). Companies have not yet considered successful hybrid working set-ups that could benefit their organization. Research is proving that 72% of businesses reported having no hybrid strategy or basic model that is being implemented into the organization. Both companies and individuals agree that a hybrid working model will help court more young talent. This research study explores the new option of creating a basic hybrid working model that can be adopted by any organization for its remote eligible workers. The model brings together the preferences of Generation Z with research on important hybrid working features specified by additional outside research. A survey conducted on people between the ages of 18 to 25 with one hundred seventeen responses found that 70.9% answered that they would prefer a hybrid working environment. The process for this hybrid work format is compared to that of a hybrid car engine (Appendix A). In order to have a successful output, there need to be specific inputs to ensure the model’s functionality. By following and adding to the model, an organization can increase the success of its hybrid working environment for the new generation of workers coming in after experiencing the pandemic. The overall study aims to voice insights on Gen Z’s working preferences and provide a future solution for creating successful hybrid working conditions for organizations with the potential for further research.