#HTE

When Stores Have to Compensate for a Failure of Package Design

If there’s one failure of package design that seems to be consistent across brands, it’s the microscopic fonts used on medicine labels. They provide crucial information on products often being purchased by elderly folk with less-than-stellar eyesight, but the brand name is always given way more real estate than the active ingredients.

Smart stores compensate. This Rite-Aid’s solution: A shelf-mounted magnifying glass on a retractable line.

And this pharmacy in Germany features them on the shopping carts:

Perhaps design schools should teach courses in “Remedial Design,” where students have to come up with low-cost, easily retrofittable-solutions to compensate for industrywide design failures.