The Hair Brush
Part 1: Personal Selection
My design tool choice is the hairbrush. I selected this tool to study because I have very thick, unruly hair, and growing up I had to go through many different kinds of hair brushes. My thin-haired friends were able to use plastic brushes with rubber teeth, but in my hair those brushes became horribly tangled. We eventually found a wood handle brush with thick bristles which we used for my hair, to this day I use a similar brush. I have experienced the pain of trying to find the properly designed brush for my hair type, so I have a background in this topic. In addition, the modern hair brush is very simple but brilliantly designed and it went through quite an extensive history to become the brush we know and use today.
Part 2: History
To study the history of the hairbrush, we must first look at the history of hair combs. Hair combs were the ancestors of hair brushes, and the earliest hair combs date as far back as Paleolithic times. It is also believed that paint brushes were used as early hair brushes, and eventually someone realized that drilling holes into a piece of wood and placing bristles into the holes made a sound hairbrush. Greeks and Romans were the first to begin using hair brushes as common practice, and Ancient Egyptians have been discovered buried with brushes and mirrors. Eventually hair brushes became a status symbol, created with beautiful carvings and rich materials. The demand for hair brushes became so great that a British man named William Kent founded the first hair brush manufacturer, “Kent Brushes”, in 1777. It wasn’t until the 1880s that hair brushes started being mass produced. Various designers patented different ideas for the brush, from elastic wire bristles to brushes with detachable handles. The 1900s saw the invention of the rubber brush, which continues to be a part of brush design to this day.
Part 3: Function
The function of the hair brush would mostly be cosmetic as well as for personal hygiene. The earliest combs were used to get rid of fleas and ticks, and brushes in the Victorian era were used instead of shampoo to clean the dirt from their hair. However, it was around this period that brushes also became a sort of status symbol, which focused on the beauty of their brushes.
Part 4: User
There is no specific user for the hair brush; in fact, the hair brush applies to more than just human beings. Animals benefit from hair brushes as well, and pet owners can use brushes designed for cats, dogs, horses, etc. In terms of humans, the benefits of a hair brush come in every part of your life. There are combs and brushes meant for baby and toddler hair, as well as brushes designed for different ethnicities and hair types.
Part 5: Materials + Production
In modern day, brushes are mainly produced with either wooden or plastic handles and elastic bristles, or rubber handles with rubber teeth. Brushes are mass produced throughout the world, and can be purchased at nearly any store. There are websites where you can order a custom hair brush- for example, if you want your brush to be monogrammed. Depending on the material and manufacturer, hair brushes can be extremely cheap or very expensive. For example the Kent hairbrushes mentioned earlier are still in production and can be purchased, but are much more expensive due to their high quality reputation.
Part 6: Affordances
The affordance of an object refers to the visual clues that are designed into the product which inform the user how this object should be used. For a hair brush, the affordances can be found in the handle and in the bristles. The handle is typically long and slender, which can easily be gripped in one’s hand. The bristles are typically tough and their spacing on the flat part of the brush indicate that the bristles are supposed to go through something. It should also be noted that some round brushes have bristles that go around the entire top part of the brush, and clearly this brush affords a different use as opposed to a brush with bristles on only one side. The hair brush is also typically on the smaller side, which affords that it can be taken places and put into bags so that one can brush their hair in many places, not just their bathroom. In my opinion, the hair brush is an extremely simple tool that has so many uses and is easily taken for granted. The design behind the hair brush is brilliant because it’s something we use every day with ver clear affordances so it’s rare that someone get confused over how to use a hair brush.
Resources
http://brigittesbrushes.com/the-history-of-hair-brushes/
https://health.nokia.com/blog/2017/01/19/the-history-of-the-hairbrush/
