Abbott Labs

The Process

Abbott is one of the leading pharmaceutical companies and has had enormous expansion from new product inventions as well as mergers and buyouts of other pharmaceutical makers

Along with a wide array of drugs, Abbott also has a wide variety of diagnostic devices, tests and standardized testing equipment — many of these came as a result of mergers and acquisitions of competitors

As a result, the need was to pull all of these various interests together including  the overseas markets interests to help establish Abbott as a world leader

The challenge was to make identification clear and easy so that a lab technician can quickly grab a tool that they need or recognize the correct medication through a clear identification system that can cross international language barriers. This was never going to be a one-size-fits-all option nor was it possible to make the branding identity small and compact. The brand identification structure needed to be large enough to encompass a enormous variety of various types of drugs, devices and packing elements

The End Result

This end result is a simple hierarchical structure based on proportions and scaling. The brand base color is "Abbott blue" but under that is color palette that is extensive to include various bacterial or viral drugs, therapies and test

The package is based on a percentage of the size of the primary face panel with the upper portion giving a space for the logo with proportions based on line widths with of the logo. The name of the drug/test along with then line spacing  is proportioned off of that logo size with a line drawing of the disease/virus/bacterial in the lower right

The rebranding affected over 1500 SKUs. Legal requirements required that the rebranding be done for all 1500 products within a year. The spec manual had to be cohesive enough to give clear direction to all types packaging such that it could be implemented by a packaging production house or inside designer and provide the same results

The result of the rebranding meant that time sensitive drugs and interventions could be developed along with packaging for quick turnaround and implementation in the market... such as the Abbott Covid test

I was part of a 5-person team that focused exclusively on the rebranding of Abbott. My role in this process was to provide design implementation and die line changes to the best/worst case scenario packaged products. These products included strangely configured boxes, shrink-wrapped packages and blister cards. When the best design options were selected, the guidelines for packaging were included in the spec book