Long NYT article on the original Oral B Indicator toothbrush.
August 1, 2002
A Little Brush, Reborn
By CHEE PEARLMAN
KRONBERG, Germany - Say goodbye to a product that is so
familiar you probably don't know it's a classic. Say
farewell to a design that has remained on the market longer
than any other product of its type. While you're at it, bid
adieu to an era that rewarded austere design on the
drugstore shelf.
The original Oral B Indicator toothbrush, one of the last
great mass-market product designs, is being retired in
favor of a younger, more curvaceous model.
Braun, the über-modernist German appliance maker, developed
the original Oral B Indicator in the late 1980's. (Both the
Oral B company and Braun are owned by Gillette.) In keeping
with the rigorous Braun aesthetic applied to everyday
objects like travel alarm clocks and coffee pots by the
company's design director, Dieter Rams, the Indicator was a
minimalist piece of hand-held architecture that was
mission-specific.
In this humble tool, every angle and rib was accounted for,
each existing for the sole purpose of maneuvering a small
brush around your every tooth. The brush is called the
Indicator because its blue bristles turn white when it
needs replacing.
In February 2001, in this tidy upscale Frankfurt suburb,
where Braun is based, its design studios were asked to
update the original Indicator - without changing the name
or the distinctive bristles - for an era that favors
complexity in everything from technology-laden sneakers to
coffee bars with dizzying selections. "The new one, with
its big, overscaled curve, has a Mae West look, versus the
original's Jean Harlow look - streamlined," said Donald
Albrecht, exhibitions curator at the Cooper-Hewitt National
Design Museum. He added that the designers seemed to be
"competing with the ratcheting up of luxury in the
bathroom" - the trend toward making it sensuous. Visually,
Mr. Albrecht preferred the Indicator of old: "It had a
clean, hygienic quality, like a good porcelain sink."
During the Indicator's market dominance (more than a 1.25
billion have been sold in America since its introduction in
1991), it was an almost compulsory accessory of daily life,
stored in toothbrush holders throughout America.
Today the Indicator, straight-edged and translucent, is
being upstaged by a wealth of multicolored curves,
squiggles and biomorphic shapes made by Colgate, Reach and
Aquafresh that preen coquettishly in the expanding
toothbrush racks in America's drugstore shelves.
Headed by Till Winkler, a 37-year-old product designer, the
design team set out to create a new version to sell for the
same low price ($1.99) and fit the same narrow American
toothbrush holders as its predecessor. Interviewed in his
studio, amid dozens of prototypes, Mr. Winkler described
the long winding path to the final design, with its gently
swooping shaft and soft ergonomic handles, which has
already begun to appear on store shelves.
Q. What is so difficult about designing a toothbrush?
A.
The challenge is that it looks very simple, and it is
really very complex because every detail is important. If I
tell people I'm a designer of manual toothbrushes and the
process takes, say, half a year, they think I am crazy.
Q. Is the complexity in the handle or the bristles?
A.
Actually, it's humans that are complicated. If you think
about how everyone has different hands and there are a lot
of different ways to use a toothbrush, and one toothbrush
has to accommodate all of these variables, you realize the
difficulty.
Q. So how do you go about the design?
A. We start building models very quickly, and we make
dozens of them. That's important because the toothbrush
lives or dies based on the way it feels in your hand. You
can make beautiful renderings, but they can't give you the
information you need to evaluate the form. From the
beginning, one big question was how far should we move from
the straight Indicator design. We also wanted to
investigate using a second, softer material integrated into
the handle.
One thing that was clear very fast was how the head would
look. We decided to move away from the rectangular head and
instead use the oval-shaped head that was already on the
market because it feels softer in your mouth and looks more
shapely.
Q. Why is the original Indicator toothbrush being put out
to pasture?
A. The fact was that sales were down. And for the same
price, competitive products have more volume in the handle
and additional soft materials, so it became easy for the
consumer to switch to a product that looked more valuable.
Q. Do you believe the original Indicator is outdated?
A.
It's a classic product without any unnecessary detail. It's
very honest. But it's perhaps plain. I'm sure a lot of
people liked it and bought it because it is so plain. You
can say it's a toothbrush that is reduced to only the
absolute basic necessities. But I'm sure that more
consumers will think that the new design is more appealing,
more valuable.
Q. What improvements have you made with the new Indicator?
A. From the beginning, we wanted to use a high-quality
plastic like the original. Then we introduced a second,
softer material for the thumb and grip, which is where we
worked on many variations and tried many types of grips.
The whole handle still had to be slim enough to fit in a
toothbrush holder. There was nothing we could do about
that.
Q. Have toothbrushes become a style accessory, similar to a
cellphone or a Swatch watch?
A. Toothbrushes now are a lot more styled. They are loud
and kind of noisy so that people see them on the shelves
and say: Oh, what's this? Ten years ago, that didn't exist.
Q. Braun has built its reputation on crisp, hard-edge
designs, and yet the trend now is toward organic and soft.
How do you reconcile the two?
A. Our challenge is to find new shapes; we're looking for
new designs while trying not to forget our roots. That's a
very difficult challenge. It's a very small path to find
the right way.
Q. You also now have the challenge of designing for the
global market. In what way does that influence your work?
A. It means that you can't make extraordinary design. You
have to make a design that's for everybody. If you try
something that's too sophisticated, and it's clear that
only 20 percent of the users will like it, you will fail,
no matter how much you personally love it.
Q. How do you determine if a toothbrush design is working?
A. Oral B does a lot of market testing and focus groups.
But usually I have a feeling for it. You know it from the
reaction you get.
Q. What do you learn from the focus groups?
A. They are
asked what they like and don't like about the visual
appearance. Then they are asked to take it in their hands,
and they describe their response to the ergonomics. Then
they take their favorite out of the group and compare it to
competitive products. It's useful to see how people think,
but as a designer it's a brutal process. You can't tell
them their opinion is wrong!
In my opinion, market research is important, but it
shouldn't be the only basis of your design decisions. It
doesn't look forward to where the market will be in five
years.
Q. What kind of toothbrush do you use at home?
A. I'm constantly trying different ones. There are probably
16 toothbrushes in my bathroom.
Q. Your work appears to follow you home. Do you have a
toothbrush holder?
A. No. In Germany we don't have those crazy things.
Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company. |
