It's a stunning—and troubling—statistic: Nearly 60 percent of prescription drugs are taken improperly, according to a study commissioned by Target. To tackle that problem, the retailer last May introduced a redesign of the decades-old amber prescription pill bottle. Dubbed ClearRX, it's the handiwork of designer Deborah Adler, who came up with the idea when her grandmother accidentally ingested her grandfather’s medicine. After months spent developing a prototype, Adler sold her design to Target. Now sporting the retailer's trademark red, the bottle eliminates many pitfalls of the earlier version, using large type and six color-coded rings to help family members distinguish between containers in a medicine cabinet. To our judges, the design immediately made sense. "The competition came down to a battle between life and death—the pill bottle and the coffin," says Satjiv Chahil, SVP for marketing at Hewlett-Packard.

BOTTOM LINE: Target’s prescription drug sales increased an estimated 14 percent last year, from $1.4 billion to $1.6 billion, according to research group Chain Store Guide Information Services.