Dementia Prevention Animation for La Trobe University and MindCare Collective

La Trobe University and MindCare Collective came to us wanting to reach people over 45 from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities with practical dementia prevention information.

La Trobe’s brief cited research showing that small, everyday lifestyle changes can reduce dementia risk by nearly half. That was the foundation they wanted to build on, but they were also mindful that dementia carries real fear in many communities, where cognitive decline is often assumed to be an inevitable part of ageing.

They were direct about what they didn’t want: urgency-led framing, worst-case scenarios, or anything that leaned on fear to motivate action. They wanted something people would actually watch and feel good about rather than switch off.

To reach those communities in their own languages, the video would need to be translated into Arabic, Hindi, Tamil, Vietnamese, Greek, Cantonese, Mandarin, Spanish, and Italian.

We produced a three-minute animation with a warm, conversational voiceover and diverse character design reflecting the communities La Trobe wanted to reach.

With animation, you can make deliberate decisions about every visual element, and for a brief with this many constraints around representation and warmth, that mattered.

Visual information like diet breakdowns was presented in simple, friendly formats rather than clinical diagrams. Characters were designed to reflect the diversity of the communities being reached, shown in everyday domestic settings rather than medical or institutional ones.

Translation into nine languages was handled by our multicultural communications partner, Ethnolink. The ten language versions now sit together on a dedicated page on the MindCare Collective program website.