Plant-Based Diet for Seniors

For a digital layout class, we worked with the Kerby Centre, a local seniors support centre, and provided them with useful infographics on a variety of topics–I chose to focus on diet as a component of therapeutic needs. The main point that I wanted to get at through my infographic was the health benefits of a plant-based diet for seniors (and the damaging effects of animal products on health). Though there are also environmental and ethical reasons for eating a plant-based diet, I felt that the health side of things would be more valued by Canadian seniors, many of whom struggle with diseases and chronic conditions. As so, my main audience for this infographic is Canadians over 55, specifically those who are living with chronic conditions or who are on the path to developing a condition. Additionally, I think that my graphic would also be of interest to places such as care homes that are feeding a number of seniors daily, many of whom may not be able to make their own food choices. As for typefaces, I stuck to sans-serif, easy-to-read type that seniors will hopefully be able to read easily. I ended up using shades of red for my graphics, as red is alarming and I wanted to emphasize that chronic conditions are a serious problem that is greatly affecting Canadians. The prevalence of chronic conditions graph's shades go from darkest to lightest to correspond with the incidence of the problems. The shade used for cardiovascular disease in the curved graph is carried over to the next graph for consistency. The fact boxes underneath the curved bar graph correspond to the conditions on the graph, but are more transparent to improve readability. So that it is clear that these are related, I labeled them 1 through 4 on both the graph and the boxes. I chose a bar graph to display my CVD information because I felt that it was a simple dataset that did not need an elaborate graph in order to have impact. Then, I wanted to provide information on how to actually incorporate more plant-based meals into everyday life. I started with a healthy plant-based plate with percentages of total calories and options for each portion of the plate. I used the photos for colour and clarity, with the facts overlaid with slightly reduced opacity to promote readability but still reveal what is underneath. For people that are more resistant to going plant-based, I included a meatless Monday section with a plant-based heart, to correspond with heart health. I hope that when people see that they don’t have to give up their favourite foods when they go plant-based that they will be more motivated to try it out. I included photos of the products so that it is easier for someone to go out and find it in the store, and then some subtle icons to break up the white space and add a hand-drawn element.