Medicine bottles are stupid and dumb. So are regulatory traffic signs, remote controls, cell phone interfaces, and the flushing mechanisms in toilets. Occasionally designers are hired to make them beautiful and dumb. Once in a blue moon, designers get it right. The new Target medicine bottle is one of those brilliant designs which make so much sense everyone must now be wondering why medicine bottles weren’t always like that. It is also great-looking, not through styling but as a result of good old form-follows-function clarity. Designed by Deborah Adler, an SVA student (who now works for Milton Glaser), as her thesis project, the new bottle sits cap downward to provide a large flat surface for clear graphics, features a pull-out card for personal and cautionary information, and is provided with changeable color-coded neck rings to distinguish drugs intended for different family members. Why is it so difficult for manufacturers to apply this kind of common-sense good design to all of those other infuriating objects that constantly frustrate us?
