ClearRx is a

trademark A trademark (also written trade mark or trade-mark) is a type of intellectual property consisting of a recognizable sign, design, or expression that identifies products or services from a particular source and distinguishes them from others ...

for a design for prescription drug packaging, designed by design student

Deborah Adler Deborah Adler (born 1975) is an American designer. A native of Chappaqua, New York, Adler is the daughter of a doctor and a nurse. She attended the University of Vermont, receiving her BFA in 1997. Adler then studied design at the School of Vis ...

as a thesis project and adopted by

Target Corporation Target Corporation (doing business as Target and stylized in all lowercase since 2018) is an American big box department store chain headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It is the seventh largest retailer in the United States, and a compon ...

(with refinements by

industrial designer Industrial design is a process of design applied to physical products that are to be manufactured by mass production. It is the creative act of determining and defining a product's form and features, which takes place in advance of the manufactur ...

Klaus Rosburg) for use in their in-store pharmacies in 2005. The design is an attempt to clarify certain difficult aspects common to most prescription bottles used in the US.

Background

The Clear Rx bottle design was created to replace the classic orange pill bottle, which had existed since just after World War 2. The orange bottle label's information was misleading, since the text was very small and most of the time the company logo was the most emphasized text on the bottle. Plus, warnings and cautions were printed on inadequate color combinations, making it hard to read.

Design

Bottles have a distinctive rounded-wedge shape and are designed to stand on their caps, with the label folding over the top of the bottle, where the name of the drug is printed in large print for easy identification. A cutout on the back of the bottle includes space for a data card describing the effects and risks of the medication. Fundamental to the design is a colored rubber ring that serves as a

color code A color code is a system for displaying information by using different colors. The earliest examples of color codes in use are for long-distance communication by use of flags, as in semaphore communication. The United Kingdom adopted a color c ...

so different members of a household can distinguish their individual prescriptions. An overall priority is given to distinguishability; the most important information (patient name, drug name, instructions) are placed prominently on the upper half of the label. Other innovations include revised warning symbols and labels and a small magnifying strip that can be inserted into the side of the bottle for customers with visual impairments. Liquid medicine bottles are not quite as distinctive, but feature a spill proof cap coupled with a dosing

syringe A syringe is a simple reciprocating pump consisting of a plunger (though in modern syringes, it is actually a piston) that fits tightly within a cylindrical tube called a barrel. The plunger can be linearly pulled and pushed along the inside ...

that is claimed to be more accurate than spoon dispensing. The liquid medicine bottles also feature the color-coded ring around the neck. The design won the "Design of the Decade" award from the

Industrial Designers Society of America The Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) is a membership-based not-for-profit organization that promotes the practice and education of industrial design. The organization was formally established in 1965 by the collaborative merger of ...

in 2010 and is included in the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

's permanent collection. After Target sold their in-store pharmacy and clinic operations to

CVS Health CVS Health Corporation (previously CVS Corporation and CVS Caremark Corporation) is an American healthcare company that owns CVS Pharmacy, a retail pharmacy chain; CVS Caremark, a pharmacy benefits manager; and Aetna, a health insurance prov ...

in December 2015, CVS discontinued the use of ClearRx.

Patents

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Background

Design

Patents

References

Further reading