Panadol label instructions

Several years ago, we developed a new way of designing medicine labels. At the time we thought that we were only helping to improve the instructions on GSK’s Panadol label, however, since its implementation our approach has been repeatedly mimicked by pharmaceutical companies, so much so that our design approach (developed for the CRI) has become somewhat of a design standard for medicine labels.

We created a list of tasks that would lead a consumer to to identify, select and use the medicine appropriately. We tested the old label to see whether it could be used for these tasks and used the evidence from testing to redesign the label. The results showed us the way a consumer needed the information presented to them, basically in the form of a long list, and the order that this list needed to be. It seems like an obvious approach, but at the time it wasn’t.

Since implementation most companies have adopted a similar approach to these highly usable and successful label instructions. This redesign was also the winner of the inaugural Quality Use of Medicines Award.