Alzheimer's Society

For the Final Major Project in foundation i decided to create an awareness campaign for the 'Alzheimer's Society'. I started this by carrying out research into the disease and how it evolved within it's victims. At times i found the material quite dark and questioned whether i wanted to continue with such a sinister subject, however, after talking to sufferers and relatives of those who suffered i found that i was becoming intrigued by the disease and creating the images became very interesting. Through research i found that the disease is diagnosed in 4 stages. 1. Pre Dementia, 2. Early Dementia, 3. Moderate Dementia, 4. Advanced Dementia. I therefore decided that my campaign would consist around those four stages. Here is what followed...

After speaking to sufferers of the disease i found that a lot of people describe Alzheimer's as a big ball of tangled string, and ball that has no beginning and no end, no way of making sense of it the information stored becomes more and more tangled, memories being lost, new information being corrupted by older information. Alzheimer's primarily effects the brain and memory, but in later stages takes control of the majority of bodily functions, taking control of the whole brain. This idea of the ball of string provided me with strong imagery to work on. I decided to create these balls of tangled information out from tracing paper with printed information about each stage on. As the balls progressed through each stage they would become more tangled, less constructed and the information would become harder for the audience to read. With the final stage resulting in complete loss of information. visualising how the disease effects the suffers brain as they progress through the stages.

Stage 1 - Pre Dementia
Stage 2 - Early Dementia
Stage 3 - Moderate Dementia
Stage 4 - Advanced Dementia

After constructing the balls, I placed them into these four posters, demonstrating the four stages. As each stage progresses the information within becomes harder and harder to understand, the whole concept behind this was to give the viewer an insight into how the disease effected the sufferer and an experience just a snippet of what it would be like to suffer from Alzheimer's.

After i had completed the posters the alzheimer's Society rung me and asked me whether they could use the designs in a charity event they where organising at the time. I told them to bugger off!.... no, i was very flattered an emailed them the images.

An Alternative idea/design, I did have other images in this collection, this was the most successful though.