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
Core System
Asset Architecture
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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.
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The same campaign holding across desktop, tablet, and mobile. Every breakpoint built from shared components, not redrawn by hand.
03 — The process
From file-by-file production to a shared component approach.
Early on it was clear the workload couldn't be managed file by file. Assets ran on different cadences, built by different people. Brand consistency was luck, not structure.
As one of three designers on the account, I helped move the work from one-off file production onto a shared component approach, with accessibility standards built into the components rather than checked at the end.
Production time dropped. Brand drift stopped. New team members could open any file and immediately understand the system, and every campaign that followed built from it.
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.
But looking back, I would have advocated harder for heat mapping and engagement data earlier in the process.
That's the gap I've been closing since: building research into my process from the start, so the next system I design is validated, not just executed.
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.
