Pharmacy as my personal project.
Around the beginning of 2022, I came across a book on Pharmaceuticals:
«Peter C. Gøtzsche. Deadly Medicines and Organised Crime: How Big Pharma Has Corrupted Healthcare»
Before that, about two years — I planned to go to medical school in the future, took additional classes in microbiology and chemistry, and even transferred from his 1208 language school to a specialized and very cool chemical school 1501.
But reading this book led to something I realized:
A doctor, no matter how wonderful, treats one patient.
A pharmacist, on the other hand, treats everyone at once.
I tried to gather some information on modern Russian pharmacy and I realized that it’s not going very well.
I wrote several letters to pharmaceutical companies (on the subject of packaging of medicines — the letter below) — and received five extremely interesting answers.
All of them buried my idea of proper drug packaging — but I got a lot of first-hand ideas about further education in pharmaceuticals,
about what and how to do in Russia in order to bring the industry to normal levels, and so on.
This project is currently ongoing.
Below I will publish the letter I wrote and one of the responses.
Letter:
Good afternoon.
I am Egor Kugno, an 8th grader at the Moscow School of Chemistry.
In a year I want to enter the Lyceum of the Higher School of Economics, the Department of Chemistry.
The exams for admission there are not enough, and you also need to have a good portfolio or a project
In accordance with my interests I decided to do a project on pharmaceutics in Russia.
And first of all, on the production of medicines.
Now I am compiling a list of questions to my project, and it is not a quick process as a whole, but some questions already prescribed.
One such issue is the color differentiation of drug packages.
I walked around pharmacies and realized that I don’t see any system in the drug packages on the shelves.
Mostly I was looking at vitamins, and I saw that there were all kinds of colors, shapes and sizes of vitamin packages
I was very surprised.
It always seemed to me as a non-professional that the industry in the world or at least in Russia long ago came to some kind of system
(Two years ago I was in robotics club and I remember very well that if I need a power cable for a robot I take the yellow one, and if I needed a wire for the rotation sensors, brown, and so on.)
So I expected that the medicine, if for example it is dangerous — will be in red packaging, poisonous — for example, in yellow, and vitamins for women in pink, for example, and medicine for lung diseases in blue packaging (like air), and so on.
Studying this subject, I found several designers in Russia, who made packages of medicines on order.
This is Repin Studio — probably the best I could find on the Internet
and
Artemy Lebedev Studio.
You can see that the first company uses a color code (which corresponds to my understanding of the problem), But the second firm only uses colors for some useless patterns (and that’s on medication!)
I found some more designers on the Behance (Adobe Corporation) site, and while they are obviously excellent designers, they don’t seem to have a systematic approach:
1. Timusol
2. Painkiller-pills-packaging
3. Bacteriophages
4. Imbian-express-tests
In connection with my project, I have a few questions that I can only get an answer from professionals in the pharmaceutical market
Please tell me if you can:
1. Do you have color-coded drug coding systems in your firm?
2. Is there a firm that develops similar (or some of your own) color schemes for you? (company name or link to the site will be sufficient)
3. Does Russian law requires something similar from manufacturers / sellers of drugs?
Or all given to self-regulation?
I understand that you are busy with business, and there is no time to register.
So I would be happy to get any response.
Thank you
Egor Kugno
One of the answers:
Egor, good day!
First of all we want to wish you success with the project!
I will try to answer your questions:
1. Do you have color-coding systems of medicines in your company?
Only «Farmatsvet» brand has color coding in our company.
The line includes a very large number of items and depending on what’s inside the package: a medicinal collection or a mono herb, The main color of the pack is either yellow (the gatherings) or green (monotrubs).
Green and yellow colors emphasize the naturalness of medicines.
Also on each package are images of the constituent plants.
Other brands often use white color — discreet, medical — and images of the constituent ingredients, for example:
https://immunofitol.ru/
https://bronchofitol.ru/
2. I s there a company that develops similar (or your own) color schemes for you? (The name of the company or link to the site will be quite enough).
Here, unfortunately, I can not tell you, it’s been a long time since the design.
But I can advise to look at the presentation of a branding agency, which also developed packaging for medicines, they have a detailed description of the logic of design development, and it’s very interesting.
3. Does Russian law require something like this from drug manufacturers/sellers?
Or is everything left to chance?
As you correctly noted, there is no strict, legislated color differentiation for the pharmaceutical industry,
color differentiation for the pharmaceutical industry does not exist.
Packaging design, to a large extent, depends on the end goal.
So, if you want to emphasize the natural composition, the packs are made in green or have pictures of the plants in them;
for preparations for women, pleasant, often pink colors are used; if the product is intended for children, you can often see cartoon characters or images of children themselves on the packages.
There are also often images of the organs for which the medicine is intended (heart, kidneys, etc.) on the packaging.
Most drugs that are on the list of life-saving drugs are sold in very simple white packages with a colored name.
White here is both associated with white doctor’s coats and cheaper, which is important for drugs in the low-price segment.
But only the manufacturer decides what to put on the package.
The Ministry of Health — which registers the package designs — has only some restrictions on the images to be placed, but there are no color requirements.
We hope that this information will help your project!
Regards,
Marketing Team