This Agency Recycled Creative Sketches to Help People With Alzheimer's

Every creative has lived the stereotype of the long night: Nearby, a waste bin bubbles over with rejected ideas, sketches and concepts that will never see the light of day, or a final approval.

Kastner Agency in Los Angles decided to do something productive with them. It gathered a bunch of unused drawings, picked out 40, and transformed them into a coloring book. Then, in partnership with the Alzheimer's Foundation of America, it had them distributed—just in time for Alzheimer's & Brain Awareness Month.

The book, Beautiful Minds, builds on the idea that coloring can be used as therapy. "Each sketch comes with a motivation line I wrote for caregivers and family members," says Simone Nobilis, who worked as a creative director on the project. (Remember "Chemical Stories"? That's him, too.)

"Color therapy is a practice that traces back to the early 1900s, when it was first brought to light by Carl Jung," Nobilis tells Muse. "Research shows that coloring ... has been proven to ease agitation and stress, improving memory and motor skills [among those who suffer from dementia]. Some experts consider the effect of coloring to be the same as meditation."

"One of the caregivers told us that a patient who was given our book suddenly, as she was coloring, remembered that she used to love bicycles. In fact, one of our sketches shows a bicycle," Nobilis says.

This story echoes that of Carmen Minero, shown below, one of the first Alzheimer's patients to use the book. "Her caregiver told us that Carmen truly enjoyed working on the book and began to remember things from her past, like her love for cats," the website reads.

Beautiful Minds was distributed at the Walk to End Alzheimer's in Los Angeles in November. Copies have been given to Alzheimer's advocates Vivica Fox and Victor Garber, and they're also being distributed at nursing homes among patients suffering from memory loss.

If you know someone affected by Alzheimer's, you can request a copy at no charge by emailing beautifulminds@kastner.agency. In the meantime, here are a few shots from the walk. (It's kinda weird, now, seeing people without masks…)