Fruit bowls nowadays seem to be very simple and common. They can be made from numerous materials, take endless forms and come in a variety of colours. The fruit bowl I designed as part of this project (aptly named the ‘floral bowl’) was designed for a particular target market in mind, students aged 18-25 with a not so large disposable income. The core concept was to create a product that not only worked, but was also relatively cheap and could be used as a centrepiece or a topic of discussion around the home.
The first challenge was to choose an appropriate material. Given the limited options, my choice was not as hard. Polypropylene to me was obviously the most suitable choice. Polypropylene is an inexpensive plastic. This makes it an ideal choice for any mass produced product as it costs the company less to purchase the material. These savings can then be passed down to the consumers, making it an ideal product for my target market.
Fatigue is the weakening of material subjected to prolonged or repeated stress. Polypropylene has good resistance to fatigue, which makes it a useful material for bowls. The repeated stress from the weight of the fruits won’t affect a polypropylene bowl as much as other materials.
Polypropylene won’t melt in the dishwasher or microwave. This means the bowl can be cleaned normally like other kitchen items and utensils. This can potentially save the consumer money as they don’t have to purchase other products to maintain the hygiene of the bowl.
Polypropylene is resistant to many solvents, bases and acids and this resistance minimises leaching of chemicals into food products. This characteristic of polypropylene makes it a suitable material for food storage products, such as bowls as there is minimal contamination by bacteria.
The next step was to consolidate my design. I wanted my bowl to represent a floral design as it helped to promote the natural and earthly feelings associated with fruits. I experimented with many flower-like designs. Finally after much deliberating and numerous test models, I came up with my final design which was one sheet that could be folded to manipulate the shape of a flower. Another advantage of having it as one sheet was that it had the potential to become a flat-packed item, which saves on transport and storage costs. However a compromise of it being flat-packed was the shape of the net. For my design to work efficiently I had to remove the base. Although there is no actual base, the tabs that go through the slots can act as a base and help support any fruit that rests on it.
Polypropylene is a very flexible material. Its form can be manipulated in a variety of ways using numerous methods. Polypropylene has no memory, meaning that once it has been bent, it generally returns to its original flat state. These two properties were combined and became beneficial to my fruit bowl design. By manipulating its form and understanding its lack of memory, I used the structure of the bowl to help cushion the fruit, hence reducing the chances of bruising and wastage.
To keep with the earthly and natural theme, I choose to use a translucent lime green for my final design colour. This was chosen to represent the nature of my inspiration, which was a flower, something natural which could be juxtaposed to my final product, which was a man-made object. Green was also chosen as it was a cool and inviting colour, which I believe suited the function of a fruit bowl. The colour green is also associated with nature as most foliage and leaves are that colour. In essence my choice of colour was based around making the product feel inviting and having an earthly aspect to it, as its function is to hold and store fruits. Ideally the bowl could be marketed in a variety of colours; especially due to the fact polypropylene comes in numerous colours.
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