🌱Creative Direction & Design: Agricultural Nonprofit

I led the creative vision and execution for the Global Harvest Initiative (GHI), an international coalition dedicated to advancing sustainable agriculture and global food security. The organization united leaders from the private sector, government, nonprofits, and academia to champion policies and innovations capable of doubling global agricultural output by 2050 while promoting environmental stewardship, reducing food waste, and improving livelihoods for farmers around the world.

The initiative brought together influential organizations including John Deere, DuPont Pioneer, Elanco, IBM, the Congressional Hunger Center, Conservation International, TransFarm Africa, Water for Food, The Nature Conservancy, and the World Wildlife Fund. My role was to transform complex agricultural research, economic policy, and scientific data into compelling visual stories that inspired action from policymakers, industry leaders, investors, and global stakeholders.

I established and evolved the organization’s visual identity across every touchpoint, creating a cohesive brand system that could support annual research reports, digital campaigns, events, social media, video, and print communications. My team and I developed:

• Comprehensive brand guidelines, typography, color palettes, and graphic standards
• A redesigned WordPress website and ongoing site maintenance
• Digital campaigns, landing pages, advertising, and email communications
• Social media strategy and visual content
• Event branding, livestream graphics, and presentation assets
• Infographics and data visualizations that simplified complex agricultural research
• Print collateral including event signage, brochures, palm cards, flyers, and annual reports ranging from 50–80 pages

Every deliverable balanced credibility with approachability, ensuring highly technical information remained accessible to audiences ranging from government officials and corporate executives to nonprofit partners and the general public.

One of the most rewarding aspects of the project was developing a distinct creative direction for each annual report while maintaining consistency with the organization’s brand.

For the first edition, I established a visual language inspired by the existing logo, pairing rich greens with blues, earth tones, subtle gradients, dark overlays, and vibrant orange accents that emphasized calls to action and optimism around agricultural innovation.

The following year, I shifted toward a warmer palette of rich earth tones that complemented documentary-style photography of farmers, markets, and agricultural communities. The visual system reflected both the resilience of the land and the people whose livelihoods depend upon it.

By the third year, a single photograph became the heart of the campaign. It featured a smiling West African produce vendor wearing a vibrant patterned dress and matching headwrap while standing behind an abundance of deep purple eggplants. The energy, dignity, and authenticity captured in that image inspired the entire visual identity. The rich purple of the produce became the campaign’s signature accent color, influencing event graphics, digital assets, and print collateral across the project.

Imagery selection became an important part of the creative strategy.

Rather than relying on stereotypical representations of developing regions, I carefully curated photography that celebrated the people, cultures, and agricultural communities represented throughout the research. Images were thoughtfully selected to reflect diverse regions including the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), East Asia, West Africa, and Central America while portraying individuals with dignity, authenticity, and optimism.

I also highlighted the beauty of agriculture itself, from vibrant produce and cultivated landscapes to the meals shared across cultures, reinforcing the universal importance of food systems and the people who sustain them.

Throughout the year, I also managed the organization’s website and social media presence while partnering with the video production team to create promotional films featuring board members, USDA leadership interviews, global agricultural footage, motion graphics, and visual content drawn directly from the annual report.

I also tracked and reported on organic and paid website traffic, social media performance, and campaign analytics to measure engagement and inform optimization efforts.

I also led the design of a members-only digital experience that extended the Global Harvest Initiative’s thought leadership beyond its public website. The responsive experience featured immersive parallax scrolling that guided users through exclusive content in a more engaging, story-driven format. Designed for policymakers, partners, and member organizations, the site included access to premium research reports, an interactive global map highlighting agricultural initiatives and regional insights, and a curated image gallery showcasing projects and communities around the world.

The experience balanced rich visual storytelling with intuitive navigation, transforming complex information into an engaging digital destination while reinforcing the organization’s premium brand and mission. By combining interactive design with accessible content architecture, the site encouraged deeper exploration of GHI’s research and global impact.

Beyond creative execution, I managed relationships with executive stakeholders, coalition partners, and print production vendors to ensure every deliverable met the highest standards of quality and consistency. Coordinating across numerous organizations with diverse priorities required thoughtful communication, strategic planning, and a collaborative leadership approach.

This work represents one of my favorite examples of purpose-driven design, using visual storytelling to make complex global issues understandable, inspire meaningful conversations, and support an initiative working toward a more sustainable and food-secure future.

Design tools: Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe InDesign, WordPress/PHP, HTML/CSS/Javascript