MunafAl-Hashimi
A physician turned industrial designer, currently seeking a design internship.
I work on quiet, intentional objects: watches I design and sell under my own small brand, plus lighting, products, and spaces.
This isn’t about perfection. It’s about design that makes sense.
My name appears two ways: Manaf Hashimi in daily life, Munaf Al-Hashimi on official documents. That small discrepancy taught me something early: details matter, but meaning matters more. It is the lens I bring to every object I design.
What pushed me toward design was not inspiration but dissatisfaction. The objects around me worked, yet they failed to resonate. I kept seeing how they could be clearer, smarter, more intentional. Perfection became a question rather than a goal.
A doctor’s eye
Medicine trained me to observe people closely: body language, speech, silence, and the way a room or a tool quietly changes how someone feels.
That interest in how spaces shape experience led me to Alvar Aalto, who drew on medicine and physiology to insist that design begins with people. It is a way of thinking I am still learning from.
Feel smart, not act smart
I do not design products that act smart. I design products that feel smart and hold their intelligence inside the object. Every line, material, and proportion has to justify its existence.
The work is built on clear concepts, deliberate choices, and how people actually interact with an object rather than how it photographs.
Objects that age with you
I have always been drawn to objects that tell stories. Now I tell them through material, through use, and through time.
I reduce until only meaning remains, so the pieces feel lived in, human, and honest. Objects that do not chase trends, but age with the people who use them.
“My transition from medicine to design is not a departure. It is a return to the language I was always meant to speak.”
Designing care
into everyday life
A series of quiet products meant to reduce a little stress and stay out of the way. This is where my medical background meets industrial design. Concept development, CAD, and AI assisted visualization; the design direction is my own.
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Insulin Backpack
01Cold chain carry for people who travel with insulin, with nothing on the outside that announces a diagnosis.
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HALE
02A tactile breathing guide that brings you back to rhythm. Moving wings pace your inhale and exhale, so nothing has to be read or counted.
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NOOB
03One tactile knob for the connected home. Everything happens in the hand, so nothing has to happen on a screen.
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XYLEM
04A humidifier that works the way a tree does. Water climbs porous terracotta by capillary action and leaves through finned surfaces, with no fan and no electricity.
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LUMA
05One light that hangs from a tent, stands on its own tripod, or travels in the hand. Warm and diffuse to sit by, focused downward to read a map.
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Mono
06A cooktop reduced to one continuous surface, where the magnetic dial is the only thing that interrupts it. Thin enough to live in a drawer.
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NAAM
07A CPAP that reads as furniture rather than equipment. Air arrives through woven textile, so the thing on your face stops feeling like a machine.
Less But
Smarter
A full design research monograph: redesigning a lighting system that kept breaking in use. Behavioural testing, drop testing, and a decision matrix led to a layered structure that protects the core. Durability through simplicity, atmosphere through restraint.
The final artifact is a living object: a slow, shifting gradient held inside an architectural silhouette.
The Path
Founder and lead designer, Saturn Watches
Dial and case design through to engineering drawings, tolerancing, and supplier coordination. I own the full pipeline: CAD, sampling, quality control, brand, and photography. Three models in production.
Cardiovascular Technologist
Reading Holter and long-term cardiac studies alongside AI-assisted diagnostic software, flagging arrhythmias for physician review. Daily practice in what a medical interface has to make obvious.
M.A. Industrial Design
Form development, CMF, manufacturing, and human factors. The Less But Smarter lighting project came out of this program.
Patient Care Provider
In-home care keeping a client safe and independent: mobility, daily living, and medication support. Documenting where everyday objects fail their users is what moved me into design, and it is still how I open a project.
Independent designer
Concept development, CAD, and spec packages for small clients. Where I learned to finish things, not just draw them.
Medical rotations
Internal medicine, surgery, and emergency care. Where I learned to observe carefully and ask better questions.
M.B.Ch.B., Medicine
Six years of anatomy, physiology, and clinical training. An understanding of reach, grip, and limits I still use when sizing a handle or a control.
Personal
projects
Work I started on my own and still run. A watch brand I design, build, and ship; dial artwork drawn for other people's watches; and the architecture and spatial studies that came before any of it.
My own watch brand: designed, engineered, prototyped, and sold by me. Balanced proportions, functional clarity, and symbolism drawn from space, racing, and architecture. From the logo to the dials to a rare unibody case, every element is intentional.
Hand sketches at scale, then strap studies, until the silhouette held.
Three dials on one architecture, each with its own colour logic and story.
CAD, dimensioned engineering drawings, and renders for the case maker and dial printer.
3D printed cases and sample development, worn for days before anything was tooled.
Space Man
01A textured black dial echoing the night sky, with blue and orange pulled from flight suits and mission tools. A 24 hour register splits day from night.
Race Man
02Deep ocean blue with a directional brushed finish. Teal and orange honour the racing yacht Intrepid and the start line markers.
Prime Man
03Two tone concrete greys for my first love, architecture, with sky blue and fire escape red as functional accents.
My design studio for wearable objects, built for collaborations with brands that share the same vision. For the Japanese micro-brand AndoAndoAndo I designed Ref22-00, a two zone GMT, and Vinyl Pilot, an aviation inspired dial series for an existing case.
Ref22-00 GMT
Dial designA two zone GMT. The 24 hour track reads at a glance without crowding the hour markers, so both time zones share one visual language instead of arguing.
Vinyl Pilot
Dial designAn aviation inspired dial series for an existing case. Concentric grooves catch the light and separate the scales, so the texture is a legibility aid first and a reference second.
Before objects,
architecture
Architecture shaped how I think about proportion, structure, and space, and I still lean on that when I draw an object. A few spatial and brand explorations, from a cliffside villa to a modern mosque, and Aēpōp, a prebiotic soda identity.
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