A prescription antihistamine brand.

Claritin is the brand name under which loratadine, an antihistamine, is sold in the United States. English Wikipedia’s loratadine article says the drug was developed by Schering-Plough, patented in 1980 and brought to market in 1988. In the United States it was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1993, a date the health-news service HealthDay also gave in December 2002, and until 2002 it was sold there on prescription.

The company that developed it had German roots. English Wikipedia says Schering-Plough began as the American subsidiary of Schering AG, the German company founded in 1851 by Ernst Christian Friedrich Schering, and became independent as a result of nationalization. In 1971 the Schering Corporation merged with Plough, Inc., founded in 1908 by the Memphis entrepreneur Abe Plough, to form Schering-Plough. The same article names Claritin and Clarinex as the company’s allergy drugs, and Dr. Scholl’s and Coppertone among its consumer brands.

Claritin has a place in the history of American drug advertising. In the mid-1990s, English Wikipedia says, Schering-Plough’s Claritin marketing team made brand-awareness television commercials that did not say what the drug was for. They showed sunny images, with voice-over lines such as “At last, a clear day is here” and “It’s time for Claritin,” and told viewers to ask their doctor about Claritin. The article says the approach led Schering-Plough and other drug makers to pursue the same strategy, and that in 1997 the Food and Drug Administration issued new rules for television commercials, allowing companies to refer viewers to print advertisements, telephone lines and websites.

Claritin also turned up in comics. In 1998, English Wikipedia says, a one-shot comic based on Batman: The Animated Series was given away to advertise the brand. It was written by Priest, pencilled by Joe Staton and inked by Mike DeCarlo, and its story features Tim Drake, Batman and Poison Ivy.

Over the counter, then Merck.

The move from prescription pad to pharmacy shelf took several years. In 1998, English Wikipedia says, the insurer Anthem petitioned the Food and Drug Administration to allow loratadine and other antihistamines to be sold over the counter while they were still protected by patents; the agency granted the request, which did not bind manufacturers. On 27 November 2002 NPR’s All Things Considered reported that the Food and Drug Administration had approved over-the-counter sales of Claritin.

HealthDay reported on 2 December 2002 that Schering-Plough’s major patent on the drug was due to expire on 19 December, and that the company said over-the-counter Claritin would reach stores by mid-December. The Tan Sheet reported on 9 December 2002 that Schering-Plough was offering consumers free samples of Claritin through a new website that had gone live shortly after the over-the-counter approval, with coupons to appear in newspapers on 15 December. Loratadine is also sold as a generic medication, English Wikipedia says.

The company behind the brand then changed. On 4 November 2009, English Wikipedia says, Schering-Plough merged with Merck & Co. in a reverse merger, with the combined company taking the Merck name, and Claritin and Clarinex became Merck products, along with Dr. Scholl’s and Coppertone.

Merck’s ownership of the consumer brands ended in 2014. Bayer said its acquisition of Merck & Co.’s consumer care business closed on 1 October 2014, following antitrust approvals, in a release republished by the trade site Bionity. The release listed Claritin with Coppertone, MiraLAX, Afrin and, in North and Latin America, Dr. Scholl’s, and said these brands complemented Bayer’s existing over-the-counter portfolio, including Aspirin and Aleve. Bayer’s chief executive, Marijn Dekkers, called the acquisition “a milestone for Bayer.”

Design and documentation.

The medicine cabinet is a rule-bound place for a packaging designer to work. A pharmacy-aisle carton has to carry a brand name, a product name and a product category on its front face, and it has to do so beside text whose wording, order and minimum type size are set by a regulator rather than by the designer. In the United States that text is the Drug Facts panel, a fixed sequence of headings in a prescribed layout, and every carton, bottle label and blister card in the category has to make room for it.

That leaves the designer a narrower field than in many consumer categories: colour blocking, a wordmark, a band or stripe that signals a line extension, and the shape of the pack itself. Blister packs add a second printed surface, the foil backing. Bottles and caps carry the same system at a smaller scale.

Each guide that follows looks at who started a brand, who has owned it since, and how its cartons, labels and advertising have changed, and it describes products only by name and category as the company lists them.

A Bayer brand since 2014.

Claritin’s owner has its own visual history. Bayer was founded in 1863 in Barmen as a partnership between the dye salesman Friedrich Bayer and the dyer Johann Friedrich Weskott, English Wikipedia says, and is headquartered in Leverkusen, Germany. The same article says Bayer received a trademark for the “Bayer Cross” logo in 1904.

The Claritin sale was one of several in which drug companies parted with consumer brands. English Wikipedia’s Kenvue article sets it beside Pfizer’s decision to merge its consumer-health division with GSK’s in 2019 and Johnson & Johnson’s spin-off of its own consumer business as Kenvue. When the Merck deal closed, Bayer’s release quoted Marijn Dekkers as saying the company intended to continue expanding its over-the-counter business “both through organic growth and bolt-on acquisitions.” With the deal, Claritin, Coppertone and MiraLAX became part of Bayer’s consumer care business.

Today the brand’s American website names Bayer as its owner. An October 2026 snapshot of claritin.com in the Internet Archive carries a notice that, unless otherwise indicated, the trademarks on the site are owned by Bayer and its affiliates or licensed for its use, with links to Bayer’s global, American and consumer-health sites. The same site lists Claritin tablets, RediTabs, Liquid Gels and chewables; Claritin-D; and a Children’s Claritin line, and adds tools named Find Your Claritin and a pollen forecast. It also links to the Diversitree Project and the Clarity Parks Project.

For a design guide, Claritin shows a name that moved from prescription to pharmacy shelf and through Schering-Plough, Merck & Co. and Bayer while keeping its name. Compare Aleve, which Bayer’s 2014 release named among its own over-the-counter brands, and Alka-Seltzer. For this guide we use a clear sky blue, deep violet and white with a rounded sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Claritin’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.