brief
Project PEER
project details
Type: Community Engagement/Social Design/Culturally-Responsive
Collaboration: Design & Community
Partnerships: University of Iowa and Southern University and A&M College, Baton Rouge (SUBR)
Deliverable: Brand Identity, Logo Design, Outreach Materials, Website Design and Development, UI/UX Design
Year: 2020-2025
Field: Design Empathy, Socially Conscious Design, Culturally Responsive Design, Human-Centered Design, Systems Thinking
Funding: SAMHSA Federal Grant ($998,000)
According to the CDC, HIV diagnoses among Black Americans remain disproportionately high, with young adults ages 18–25 among the populations most affected and least reached by traditional prevention messaging. Project PEER — Prevent, Engage, Empower, Respond — is a federally funded initiative I’ve worked on since 2020, developed through a partnership between the University of Iowa and Southern University and A&M College, Baton Rouge (SUBR), to deliver a culturally-responsive HIV and Substance Use Disorders prevention program for African American young adults.
As Creative Director, I worked alongside Co-Principals Ebonee Johnson and Clarence D. Merckerson to shape a visual identity capable of reaching a population that public health messaging has often failed to speak to directly. Rather than treating design as a final layer applied to already-determined content, I built the brand identity, outreach materials, and community-facing website around iterative feedback loops with the African American young adults the program was designed to serve — ensuring that how the message looked and sounded was as intentional as what it said.
The identity had to do two things simultaneously: carry the seriousness of its subject matter, and offer the warmth required to make a hard conversation feel approachable rather than clinical. The brand identity, outreach materials, and community-facing website were designed to work as a single system.
The project’s reach quickly extended beyond its originating campuses. In 2023, Project PEER was highlighted by SAMHSA’s national 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline campaign, “Be The 1To,” as a model for culturally responsive outreach. Over its five-year run (2020–2025), the project was supported by $998,000 in SAMHSA federal funding, and it demonstrates how design can shape not just how public health messaging looks, but how it’s built, tested, and trusted from the outset.
