Missouri: Class Project Becomes a Kansas City Campaign of HIV/AIDS Awareness

Kyle Huber is taking his HIV prevention message to bathroom walls and car windshields across Kansas City.

Huber, a recent graduate of the Kansas City Art Institute, began his mission while undertaking a class assignment. To Huber, other topics were interesting, but HIV/AIDS prevention was compelling.

"With me being a young, white, gay male, I know that young people tend to feel invincible and think this is not going to happen to me," Huber said.

The class project was small scale, but was seen by the right person: Michael Lintecum, event producer for the AIDS Service Foundation (ASF). Impressed with Huber's work, Lintecum made him the creative director and designer for a local poster/social networking effort to raise HIV/AIDS awareness among youth.

Huber's "spread the truth" Facebook campaign to raise awareness has engaged thousands of people.

"He initiated this campaign on his own. It's pretty cool stuff. Kyle was the right person at the right time for the ASF to partner with," Lintecum said.

Huber's posters are stark. Using "spread the truth, not the disease" as the theme, the posters feature a black and white photo of a model with a statistic about HIV/AIDS on the model's face.

"I wanted to create something that would stick in your mind and scare you, something you would never forget," Huber said.

Huber's posters will be seen during a run of the play "Rent" June 4-20 at the City Stage of Kansas City's Union Station.

For more information on ASF, visit www.asfkc.org.

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