Since I slept about 16 hours yesterday/today due to being medicated in the hospital, I am now awake and wanting to share. Although I have a growing list of topics I want to write and post both on here and on the blog that I have in the works, I thought I would first talk about another odd or “meant to be” moment that happened in the weeks leading up to my diagnosis.
While I was in Design School at Kendall College of Art and Design oh so many years ago, I fell love with many breast cancer organizations like the Susan G. Komen organization and the pink ribbon association, because of my personal connection in loosing my very inspirational aunt. However because of how young I was at the time, I was personally touched by the mission of an organization called Boarding for Breast Cancer that is geared to informing a much younger audience on not only the risks and possible precautions to take in preventing breast cancer, but also on how to be proactive in early detection as well. During that time, I designed a poster campaign that won me a handful of local/regional design awards and I did get in contact with B4BC as well. (A big thank you to my former snowboarder college roommate and friend Margret for showing me this site and getting me involved so many years ago)
Which brings me to the again “meant to be” moment of my personal journey. As many of you know I have several passions, but from a career stand point I am both an advertising art director and a photographer. Although the past year and a half have been publicly more about photography then advertising and design I will openly admit that my passion for design and art direction has been itching like crazy while I push my passion for my photography business. Naturally I wanted to regain involvement in West Michigan’s agency/design network so that I could be involved in both my creative passions and started to take action a few months back.
In preparing for a meeting with one of the many great creative design/advertising agencies here in Grand Rapids about 6-8 weeks ago, I decided to update or redesign the breast cancer poster campaign that I did all those years ago. Of course when I did this, I had no idea that I would soon myself be diagnosed with breast cancer or that I was in a sense redesigning these posters while being personally attacked by this disease. The information on the posters is directly from Boarding for Breast Cancer and is about being pro-active in your own healthcare and taking precautions before you end up in my shoes. So I think it’s more then fitting that I share these posters with you now.
I’m also going to include the link to Boarding for Breast Cancer’s website. If you get a chance, check it out. It’s a great resource for anyone, but especially for young people looking for information on Breast Cancer.
