September is World Alzheimer’s Month—and September 21 is World Alzheimer’s Day—where people and organizations around the globe raise awareness of Alzheimer’s disease and other kinds of dementia. As part of this awareness, UK-based print and branding company Solopress had circulated some best practices for designing and producing Alzheimer’s-friendly signage and display graphics. We had run these best practices in our Newsfeed, but I felt it was worth digging into more specifics. After all, a lot of these kinds of signs and graphics are installed in health care facilities, nursing homes, and other locations whose patients or residents may suffer from some kind of dementia. And, at the same time, there are many people in the population at large who are not hospitalized and, like all of us, need to use signage to navigate the world.

It’s not a small problem. According to the Alzheimer’s Association, in 2022, an estimated 6.5 million Americans age 65 and older are living with Alzheimer’s. Worldwide, an estimated 55 million people are living with Alzheimer’s or related types of dementia—and that number is expected to grow to 139 million by 2050. No doubt most people reading this have known friends and/or loved ones who have been afflicted by Alzheimer’s, and thus know firsthand how devastating it can be. So designing signage and other printed materials dementia patients in mind can make their lives a little bit easier. And, as it happens, these best practices just make good design sense.

“Whilst there are specific locations, such as hospitals or care homes, where signage optimized for Alzheimer’s patients is necessary, we at Solopress believe that accessible design principles should be adopted across all signage where possible,” said Solopress’ Danny Powell, who wrote the best practices guide. “We have seen an encouraging number of designers taking visually-impaired people into account throughout the design process. By considering accessibility from the beginning of the design, inclusivity is possible in most applications, with little extra effort required.”