5 years old: My first meeting with Design

                                               Photo Courtesy of: http://www.x-entertainment.com/articles/0854/

          Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was a popular cartoon show in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. This is a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle cereal bowl.  The bowl was constructed so that the actual turtle is the bowl!  How ingenious, that the designer didn’t just phone it in, and put a logo on the bowl or just paint a regular bowl green.  On one end of the bowl is one of the four ninja turtles: Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo, or Donatello.  Along the edges of the bowl are the turtle’s hands and feet.  This further encapsulated youth during this time because what is one thing all children do beside brush their teeth and put on their pajamas?  Eat Cereal!!!!!!  So why not come up with a design that implement the most popular cartoon show for kids and their favorite pastime, eating cereal?  This bowl was not all aesthetic however, its shell (literally) was very durable, and it was also dishwasher safe.  The bowl could hold a fairly large amount of cereal for a child, and with every spoonful it engaged the child’s visual senses.  In most households, having your Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle bowl was more important than the cereal that was in it.  This cartoon was a merchandising machine, and this is just one of many examples of such.  However, it felt that the designers of the merchandise really cared about the fans of the turtles and not just of making a quick buck.  That is an important ideal of design; create for people and for the world, not for monetary reasons.  Money can’t write a letter and express gratitude for the design of a particular object, or go and support an art gallery or exhibit.  Invest in people and thus they will invest in you, and if that doesn’t work grab a bowl of your favorite cereal in one of these turtle bowls.  I promise you will feel better after that last slurp of milk.