Toothpaste Holder

I took a 4 week product design summer class at Pratt Institute and one of the assignments was to design any home product that would improve your life in some way.

I designed a travel size toothpaste holder that has a built in squeezer to get the last bit of toothpaste out.

Timeframe : Jul 11th - Jul 18th Role : Designer Skills : Fusion 360, sketching, & modelmaking

My process

I began sketching, since I already had an idea in mind. I decided on a simple cube shape for the holder and a thin rectangular shape for the squeezer. I wanted them both to be magnetized so that when you needed the squeezer, you could snap it off to use it. I took some measurements of the toothpaste cap to determine how big the holder would be, and then I modeled it using chipboard (pictured below).

While I liked the look, I quickly realized that holding the thin squeezer and trying to use it was extremely difficult. To solve this, I wanted to make the squeezer a part of the holder so that the user would have more surface area to grip. To test this idea, I made a quick foamcore model.

Small surface area to hold = not good

This redesign allowed the user to grip the holder instead, making it much more ergonomic.

Once I was satisfied with both the form and the function, I modeled it in Fusion 360, and printed it.

Results