Brand Matters: A Fix for Design
S Robert Sprung. By Robert C. Sprung - TippingSprung LLC
Package designers don’t often make headlines. But that’s the fate of Deborah Adler, a graphic designer who has been featured in New York magazine, and who has made the round of the talk shows and news hours. Her handiwork? A fundamental redesign of the standard pharmacy pill bottle, soon to be unveiled at Target’s pharmacies nationwide. Adler’s design throws light on a fundamental challenge facing package designers in cosmetics and personal care—how to innovate and think out of the box, drawing inspiration from fields where it seems that most of the good ideas are already taken. In particular, Adler’s design could compel beauty product marketers to take a fresh look at how to make use of a package’s surfaces, and how to make text more readable.
The story of Adler’s design begins with her work on her master’s thesis at the School of Visual Arts in New York. It was there that shedrew on her life experience and decided to tackle a fundamental problem: traditional pill bottles had a number of drawbacks. Their round surface offered a label that was difficult to read; their labels typically had no real hierarchy of information; there was little of the wisdom of modern information design. Adler had personal experience to draw on: her grandmother once took the wrong pills from a poorly labeled pharmacy bottle. The result of Adler’s work is what is now called the ClearRx package design.
Here are the key features of the ClearRx design, as it is being rolled out at Target pharmacies:
- Redesigned Bottle—The bottle has a front and a back, allowing for easy display of information; gone is the hard-to-read cylinder. Easy-to-read fonts make information clearer. Prescription data are reorganized with the most important information—including drug name and prescribing instructions—at the top.
- Removable Information Card—The back of the bottle has a slot for an information card that summarizes drug usage. Gone are the lengthy instructions stapled to the bag.
- Color-Coded Ring—For multimember households, color-coded rings on the neck identify each person’s medication.
- Redesigned Warning Icons—The new icons on the back panel make important medical warnings clearer and easier to understand.
Adler’s design causes us to try to apply higher-level thinking about information design. Many times, designers will choose typography for aesthetics, but may not be prioritizing information and making it user friendly. Just think of the small type used on packages from shampoo bottles to toothpaste tubes. At the end of the day, the consumer needs clear communication.
Robert C. Sprung can be reached at robert@tippingsprung.com. TippingSprung (New York City) offers brand strategy, naming, and design services with a focus on the needs of technology companies.