Flowform Salad Tongs
Flowform Salad Tongs from Adriana Garcia
Flowform Salad Tongs

The flowform salad tongs are designed to merge two concepts, fair curves and ergonomics. They are meant to draw function out of their form by using only simple fair curves that weave ergonomics into the shape. It took nearly seven foam models and countless top and side silhouette drawings to create the final design. They were then rough cut on a band saw out of two blocks of beech wood measuring 10 inches long by 3 inches wide, rough sanded with power sanders and finally hand sanded in a process that took nearly four weeks to complete, from their initial design to the final product.

I intended the final form to be easily identified as salad tongs, but to give them a slight twist, both literally and figuratively. The fair curves of the tongs join at the neck, providing a nice and intuitive place for the user to place their hands while giving them an elegant and intriguing look.

Generating the final form of the salad tongs required sketching many pages of silhouettes and the use of lofted drawing techniques like the ones pictured above
Pictured above are descriptive sketches of the salad tong's ergonomics. These sketches were made to explore where the hand falls on the tongs, and what these look like in use.
Concise illustration of the salad tongs' production process.
Orthographic views of the final form.
After the initial sketching process I chose the best iterations and prototyped them. The foam models pictured here are some examples of the prototypes that lead up to the final form.
gLike
Flowform Salad Tongs

The flowform salad tongs are designed to merge two concepts, fair curves and ergonomics. They are meant to draw function out of their form by using only simple fair curves that weave ergonomics into the shape. It took nearly seven foam models and countless top and side silhouette drawings to create the final design. They were then rough cut on a band saw out of two blocks of beech wood measuring 10 inches long by 3 inches wide, rough sanded with power sanders and finally hand sanded in a process that took nearly four weeks to complete, from their initial design to the final product.

I intended the final form to be easily identified as salad tongs, but to give them a slight twist, both literally and figuratively. The fair curves of the tongs join at the neck, providing a nice and intuitive place for the user to place their hands while giving them an elegant and intriguing look.

Adriana Garcia
Product Designer and Industrial Design Junior at Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA