REXALL
4+ Years Building for Canada's Largest Pharmacy Chain.
When a national pharmacy chain runs weekly promotions across flyers, web, email, and in-store at the same time, one off-brand asset breaks the whole experience. As one of three designers on the account, I helped build the system that made sure that never happened.
12+
Ad formats
100%
AODA Compliance
Hundreds
Assets per month
View Website
01 — The brief
Multi-platform retail moves fast. The system cannot break.
Rexall produces some of the highest-volume promotional design in Canadian retail. Campaigns cycle weekly across flyers, web banners, email, PDPs, and in-store signage. Often simultaneously, often under 24-hour turnaround.
The brief wasn't just "make it look good." It was: build a production workflow that scales without breaking, and make every single output AODA compliant without it becoming anyone's bottleneck.
Campaign creative had to flex from clinical to lifestyle without breaking the system. Same tokens, completely different mood.
Attention in retail is measured in seconds. Every asset had to land immediately.
02 — The audience
Designing for everyone, across every province.
Rexall's customers skew older, less tech-savvy, and shop across every province on every device. A banner that looked clean on a retina MacBook had to hold up just as well at 14pt on a basic Android browser in rural Ontario.
That constraint shaped every decision: type scale, contrast ratios, tap target sizing, image alt text. Accessibility wasn't reviewed at the end. It was the starting condition.
The same layout on a retina display and at 14pt on a basic Android browser. Type scale and contrast were sized for the harder case first.
View Website
The same campaign holding across desktop, tablet, and mobile. Every breakpoint built from shared components, not redrawn by hand.
03 — The process
A weekly cycle that cannot afford a redraw.
Rexall's promotional calendar does not pause. New offers land every week across flyer, web, email, PDP and in-store signage, often on a 24-hour turn. At that pace the risk is not one bad layout. It is the same campaign quietly drifting apart across five placements.
As one of three designers on the account, my part was making each week's set repeatable. Files another designer could open and finish without asking me. Type scale and contrast decided once, so accessibility was a starting condition rather than a review note. Enough structure that a new campaign began from something rather than a blank page.
What that bought was speed without drift.
Campaign assets had to hold on light backgrounds and on dark in-store signage without colour drifting between formats.
Consistent treatment of repeated elements cut per-campaign rebuild time and kept AODA contrast locked in.
04 — The outcome
Faster output. Fewer errors. Zero accessibility failures.
Over four years this became how the account ran. Assets shipped faster and we held 100% AODA compliance across all digital touchpoints. New campaigns started from an established foundation instead of a blank file.
Four years of campaigns built from the same components. New work started from the system instead of a blank file.
Built for speed. Built to last.
05 — In hindsight
Most of the design work was driven by business requirements and brand standards, which made sense given the pace. Looking back, I would have advocated harder for heat mapping and engagement data earlier. A system that holds is worth more when you can also show which parts of it are working.
Sensitive health categories demanded extra care in tone and accessibility. The system's contrast and type standards held even where the subject matter was delicate.
Also from this account
The web and digital side of this account.
Site banners at every placement Rexall.ca has, landing pages on desktop and mobile, and solo emails for national brand partners. All of it drawn in Figma, and collected on one page with the Aviso Wealth work.
