From Rafael Holguin, SVP, Director of Design, Palio

It would be unfair of me to write about the design of medicine labels and brand identity in pharmaceutical products without looking back. After researching, I was amazed by the artistic quality and fascinating shaped bottles, typographic labels, interesting ingredients and elegant color palettes. In those days elixirs, liniments, syrups, pills, extracts, tonics and balms were produced and distributed by doctors themselves!

Until around 150 years ago, anyone could call themselves a chemist or druggist. The first steps in regulating the profession came in 1842 with the founding of the Pharmaceutical Society.

Some of the substances prohibited today were legally available in the past. Interestingly, the world-famous soft drink, Coca-Cola, was initially made from a syrup that listed as an ingredient, coca. John Pemberton (1831-1888), a pharmacist from Atlanta, Georgia sold many tonics and elixirs, and among them was Coke syrup known to have a medicinal or sedating effect. At that time, the addictive and harmful qualities of cocaine were not known and it wasn’t illegal in the U.S. It isn’t surprising that we won’t find this historical fact in the Coca-Cola website. It’s fascinating to me that one of the largest consumer brands in the world has such a direct link to the pharmaceutical industry.

Looking at the early 1800’s medicine vintage labels you would appreciate the exquisite handwritten and typographic treatments, printing techniques, and shapes and paper stock of the labels — some of them very simple and straightforward, others more ornate combinations of serif and sans serif typographies.

Very early on, physicians and marketers realized the importance of design in providing differentiation. Soon, greater competition began fueling more creativity. Nothing has changed in principle since then except that there are more regulations and controls designed to protect the public. For instance, when designing the brand identity of a pharmaceutical brand today, the generic name must appear below the product name at 50% of the height in size of the tallest character in the brand logotype, and legibility is extremely important.

It’s the same when choosing the color palette and symbols for a brand — the FDA regulates all aspects of advertising graphics to avoid confusion among products. This is very important to prevent the misuse of medicine by physicians, pharmacists, nurses and patients. It’s mandatory now that all pharmaceutical communication for both professionals and consumers is reviewed and approved by the FDA. This process is very strict. In addition, none of the visual and verbal branding elements can convey information that makes claims not supported by data.

Therefore, there is some creative limitation that could begin to genericize the marketing expression of a brand if we don’t seek to use the most artistic originality possible within our constraints. Adding to the difficulty are the rushed deadlines and then the focus-group factor that can hinder the good old-fashioned craftsmanship that produces truly great work.

Design innovation is imperative to produce breakthrough branding within these established boundaries. We can only do this if we carve out the proper amount of time to educate ourselves about the product profile, MOA, market dynamics and unmet needs of the audience and we don’t truncate the creative process. Obviously, it’s a lot easier to default to the typical expressions of the triumphant “jumping for joy” figure, the meaningless “swoosh,” or something so abstract or generic that it becomes completeley meaningless and non-differentiating.

However, there are some pharmaceutical brands that have achieved high design standards — like Nexium (the purple pill). Astra Zeneca’s Nexium managed to own the color purple in the mind of the world; purple is a “cool” color very appropriate for a medication prescribed to treat the symptoms of acid reflux and heartburn. Creating “the purple pill” was brilliant. Advair has followed this example with “the purple disk” and Pfizer’s Viagra did the same with “the blue pill.”

Of course, there are other famous pharma branding cases; Bayer aspirin is surely one. In 1897, chemist Felix Hoffmann, at Bayer in Germany, chemically synthesized a stable form of ASA powder that relieved his father’s rheumatism. The compound later became the active ingredient in aspirin, which took its name from the “a” in acetyl, the “spir” from the spirea plant (which yields salicin), and the addition of “in,” a common suffix for medications. In 1899, Bayer distributed aspirin powder to physicians to give to their patients, and it soon became the number one drug worldwide.

In branding, the biggest sign of success is when your product becomes synonymous with the category. People worldwide always refer to aspirin when speaking of medicine for headaches. Non pharmaceutical examples are Scotch tape, Xerox, FedEx and Google. I‘m convinced that great strategy and well designed brand names, colors, logotypes, symbols and concepts go a long way to ensure a brand’s memorability and acceptance… perhaps as much as fundamental factors like quality and efficacy.