Mavia
January / June 2017
Individual Project
The aim of this project was to create a highly sustainable, yet profitable razor design. Mavia targets a gap in the market for luxury women's razors, whilst maintaining a sustainable product life-cycle.
Set at a high price, Mavia encourages users to keep it for as along as possible. By extending it's lifetime, the carbon emissions involved in manufacture are reduced. This both presents a profitable business model and sustainable design.
Ideation
Using plasticine and blue foam to create and test different forms
Manufacture
Recycled aluminium is used to make the handle, giving the product an infinite circular lifetime. The abundance of aluminium cans and the ease of casting aluminium into an elegant, timeless design made it perfect for the handle. A prototype was manufactured to represent the final design. This was cast in pewter using a silicone die.
After casting the handle, the runner and riser needed to removed.
The completed silicone mould successfully picked up all of the details on the 3D print.
The 3D printed handle was suspended in a plywood box to create the mould. Silicone was mixed, poured and left to cure overnight.
Final Product
The date of manufacture is imprinted, encouraging the user to keep the handle for as long as possible by generating a sense of value.
Aluminium Recycling icon reminds the user to properly dispose of Mavia.
The razor design allows users to change grip depending on their hand size.
Smaller Hands
Larger Hands
SolidWorks was used to create the form of the razor. I used the surfaces feature to create the complex curvature. This allowed it to be 3D printed to create the silicone mould used for casting.
Evaluate
When compared with an existing razor (the Wilkinson Sword Intuition), Mavia shows considerable sustainability improvements across it's lifetime. The results have been scaled according to the approximate lifetime of each product. CES EduPack was used to determine these figures.