Poster Program Award | West Virginia University Extension Service (4-H) October 1993 | Fort Ashby, WV

Visual Advocacy & Design: Awarded State Recognition for a series of 11×17 graphic advocacy posters targeting substance abuse prevention. Developed high-impact visual narratives to communicate complex social messaging, demonstrating an early aptitude for information design and community-level engagement.

Synthesizing Strategy: Leveraged personal “Hard-edge” principles to engineer persuasive visual assets. This recognition by the WVU Extension Service served as a formal validation of design efficacy and the ability to align creative output with institutional objectives.

The “Strategic Asset” Reflection

The Analog Architecture: Before I was porting logos to pixels, I was working with 11×17 poster board and physical media. Winning State Recognition from the West Virginia University Extension Service in 1993 wasn’t just an art award; it was a validation of Signal vs. Noise. > My posters were focused on drug-use prevention—a visual extension of the “Hard-edge” philosophy I lived by. I had to take a high-stakes message and condense it into a single, scannable frame that could influence a viewer’s decision-making.

In my IT career, I do the same thing: I take massive amounts of “Drug-prevention” level data (complex, noisy, and high-consequence) and architect it into a clean, intuitive UI. Whether it’s a 4-H poster or a React dashboard, the goal is the same—Clarity as a Service.