Source Image: http://cafecomcoca.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/gatorade21.jpg
All athletes know that hydration is key to being successful and staying healthy. You can’t sweat blood and tears without thinking about cold water, or your next gulp of your favorite sports drink. Well, on behalf UCD Women’s basketball starting off their season, I’ve decided to dedicate this post to my team. On that note, as you read this you might ask yourself, “What the hell does this have to do with Design?” But I hope that you take much more away from this then just my sense of humor.
“The thirst quencher,” the long lasting performance drink, your go to way of keeping yourself from shutting down. Gatorade is a prime way of recovering, and has the nutrition facts to prove it. Even though that lemon lime might taste delicious, have you ever thought about anything other than the drink itself, like the packaging. Like the actual design of the bottle. Take a close look. Take a second. Great, now, hoping you’re on my level, you can’t help but notice that it takes a similar form to a penis. Yes I said it, but you can’t deny you didn’t think it. Gatorade has designed such a perfectly proportional shaft that it puts all men to shame. You can’t blame the creators for choosing such a recognizable shape. Baseball bats, hot dogs, pencils, missiles, and rocketships all have something in common. Giving those objects the benefit of the doubt, they are designed in such a way to create efficiency and practical use. So do I really need a penis shaped bottle to make sure that I’m drinking it correctly. Call me crazy, but I don’t think so.
All joking aside, let’s get serious, and try to break this down. Somewhere, there are a group of people sitting in a board room, laughing out loud, while making millions of dollars, as they watch Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods take a big swig from their thunder penis. However, they are making millions for a reason, so perhaps they have found a secret way to catch our attention, and force us to pay about $2 dollars for 8 fl ounces of complex carbohydrates.
Ancient art and sculpture has many sexual connotations. For example, Michelangelo was not afraid to show the human body for what it was, beautiful, flawed, and graceful. The statue of David is the most famous statue to date. Michelangelo places David in the perfect contraposto. And for those art illiterate out there, “contraposto” is considered the perfect “stance”, the most natural S curved shape that the body takes. It gives a human figure a very natural realistic look. In fact, the “contrapposto” was actually created by the ancient Greeks "in order to give their statues more human characteristics.”
Source of Image: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-09/07/xin_410901071333420166997.jpg
Possibly, Gatorade has simply sought out to capture the basic primitive qualities of what our earliest designers created. The “human” characteristics of the Gaterade bottle offeres a realistic shape that humans can relate to. Design has many roots, and those roots of origin challenge us to recognize the past, and to discover a way to lead toward novelty. The Gatorade bottle must then, have novelty. It is striking, and odd, and an evident example of our emergence as designers. It is our subconscious that forces us to purchase a perfectly mushroom tipped bottle. And it is our instinctive response to the design that has us coming back for more.
Maybe it is a deisgn conspiracy... OR maybe those people in the board room are so appreciative, and loyal to ancient art, that they couldn’t help but take a bottle and shape into something so deeply rooted into our design history. Design is not an evil scheme, but a challenge for understanding. Deisgn cannot be planned. It is an innovative means of "becoming." So innovative that you could even go as far to say, that the Gatorade bottle is a miniature Statue of David, and the creators are modern day Michaelangelo's.
