Target looks at a new type of medicine bottle

Helen, the grandmother of all that originated in Deborah Adler, is ill. She inadvertently swallowed her husband's medicine. The drugs they use for their husband and wife are the same in prescription but in different doses.

After his grandmother's body was turned, Adler, the senior design prescription bottle at the Milton Glaser Inc. in New York, needed improvement. The writing on the medicine bottle is blurred. The bottle is cylindrical, so people have to rotate the bottle while reading the information on the bottle. The largest typeface on the bottle is the pharmacy brand, although this information is far less important than the drug name or dose. And there are huge differences in the labels of different pharmacies.

How Adler will improve bottle design as a subject of her graduation at the School of Visual Arts and begin to study it. She constantly consults experts, consults books and research materials, and she also searches the internet for various materials. She found that misunderstanding the prescription label is a common problem. (In a recent survey, Target Corp. pointed out that 60% of Americans used drugs by mistake.)

In her master thesis, Adler tried to correct some of the problems through a "safe prescription." She designed a D-shaped vial because the flat surface was easy to read, and the new label divided the information into two types—primary and secondary. The main information includes the name of the drug, the dosage, and the correct method of administration. Secondary information includes the doctor's name, expiration date, and quantity.

"This kind of label design is intuitive," Adler said in a telephone interview. "It's very easy to understand."

Her initial design was inspired by the aesthetics of the ancient pharmacy and there are some problems. More importantly, injection-molding such children-resistant D-shaped caps is quite difficult.

However, many of her initial ideas have been applied to the final product, such as changing the cylindrical shape of the bottle, and using both positive and negative shapes. Adler also pastes information cards on the vials instead of placing them in prescription bags.

She said: "Ten eighty-nine, you will throw away this bag."

In the end, she determined that the label could reasonably distinguish between primary and secondary information. "The most important change I made to the entire system is the tag," she said.

After receiving a master's degree in fine arts, she met Minda Gralnek, an innovative director at Target. The company thinks Adler's idea is worth trying, and her proposal is also sponsored by project manager Matt Grisik.

ClearRx is now widely used in Target's pharmacies throughout the United States. Klaus Rosburg, designer of Sonic Design Solutions Inc., based in New York, also participated in the project.

"We work closely together to ensure the harmonization of labels and vials," Adler said.

Rosburg had considered turning the bottle upside down. His inspiration comes from other places.

“We noticed the mint dispenser,” he said in a July 26 telephone interview. “But if the bottle is made into that shape, there is no guarantee that children will not be able to open the seal.” So, Rosburg caps the bottle. Installed on the bottom of the bottle. In this way, the label can be attached to the top of the bottle, so that the pharmacy can save a lot of effort on labeling problems.

Although Adler's paper originally proposed the use of the 6-color rubber ring system to distinguish different family members' vials, Rosburg and Adler collaborated on the project. Coloured rubber bands can warn family members if they accidentally misuse other people's drugs. This is similar to a toothbrush with different colors for each family member.

Rosburg also collaborates with Kerr Group Inc., a company that deals in injection molding and blow molding for plastic packaging. The latter recently became a subsidiary of Berry Plastics Corp., which is headquartered in Evansville, Indiana.

Target contacted Kerr in June 2004. Mark Fricke, Kerr’s vice president of business development, held meetings with Target’s executives (including Mary Kelly, vice president of healthcare and beauty, and Richard Carron, senior buyer).

Prior to this, Kerr never cooperated with Target. "This is our first time in the market," Fricke said.

The vial is a blow molded product made from glycol-modified PET by Kerr's facility in Anheim, California. The cap is an injection molded product made from polypropylene at its factory in Ahoskie, North Carolina.

Fricke said that the best part of the project is the opportunity to change things that are usually taken for granted.

"What's really exciting is that we have made a unique innovation for a product that hasn't changed in 30 years," he said in a July 28 telephone interview.

The ClearRX design will be exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in October. Its exhibits are called "safety: the risk of design."

“I was so excited to see it in this world. It was a great honor to be able to exhibit in the Museum of Modern Art,” Adler said.

Source: International Plastics Industry