#HTE

Great Industrial Design Student Work: Shay Nifusi’s Monobloc Brushes

Shay Nifusi’s Monobloc Brushes “are a result of material and cultural study made as my graduation project at the Industrial Design Department in Shenkar,” he writes. “Focusing on such an arbitrary object for a graduation project came from realizing that there is a lot to learn from this small product. Simply put— every brush in the world has a handle and bristles. It’s the combination between them that tell us how, when and by whom it was made.”

“The process kicked off with reading subject related books, meeting a local brush maker and making brushes the traditional way (folding groups of bristles into pre-cut holes in a piece of wood).”

“I then looked for more efficient ways of making a brush and somewhere in the process I felt that using industrially made plastic hair (Polypropylene) for traditional brush making techniques is odd.”

“Looking for a way to fully industrialize the process, I started forming groups of PP bristles by pressing them in a toaster which led to develope a new way of making the product. By using molds compounded by both heat conducting and insulating parts, I could thermoform plastic hairs and create integral handles.”

“I designed the shapes in a back and forth experimentation between studying natural flow of the PP hair groups and sculpting similar archetypes in Polyurethane foam. The process resulted in a new way of making brushes in CNC milled aluminium & SikaBlock molds.”

The assignment wasn’t recent—Nifusi gained his degree in 2013, and after years of working in ID, has since switched over to ME—but I think the project is a great example of manufacturing experimentation by a student, and I found the resultant objects beautiful.