In summary

  • Swinburne students and alum are creating designs for the new luxury product brand Lood
  • These young designers were all employed through Swinburne’s professional industry placement program
  • They helped inspire the creation of the brand as a platform to showcase the creativity of emerging designers

Swinburne students and alum are part of the design team for the new luxury product brand Lood. These designers are proving that the early years of a creative career don’t have to be boring, by contributing their own designs and taking them all the way from conception to market.

Lood's founder, David Robinson, has been taking on Swinburne industry placement students since 2019 at his company Sakimoto. Many of these students have gone on to future employment with the business and have heloed inspire the creation of the Lood brand.

"The challenge is retaining these talented students once they graduate and giving them the chance to build a career that is personally satisfying. Lood is our way of providing this opportunity for recent graduates while growing our business." David says.

Luxury brand Lood is focused on designing desirable objects with a simple, artistic touch.

Meet the designers

Swinburne students Lucy Norbury, Lucy Callahan and Oscar Thomas are excited to be front and centre of the new Lood brand, designing their own product from pitch to production.

Lucy N graduated from the Bachelor of Industrial Design (Honours)  at Swinburne in 2022.

She did her industry placement at Sakimoto in 2020 and worked her way up to a Design Supervisor role at the organisation by the time she graduated. 

“Lood is really special to all of us because it’s giving us a platform to have creative freedom and show our own ideas in an environment that encourages creativity and growth,” she says.

Lucy C and Oscar did their industry placements at Sakimoto in 2020 and 2022 respectively and are due to graduate from Swinburne in 2023.  

“Doing placement and work here has been so important for my design career, everyone is so happy to share their knowledge,” Lucy C says. 

Luxury in the ordinary

“David came to me and said he’d like to get me onto a design for Lood, and that I could work on an existing product or pitch one of my own. Later, as I was going to sleep, I looked down and saw a plant at the end of my bed and just had this idea,” Lucy N says.

Lucy N’s pitch was to reimagine a simple garden stake as a desirable household object. Her elegant brass and wood design has been created to grow infinitely alongside a house plant. 

For her design, Lucy C has been refining the fluid form of a designer bottle opener. 

“We’re focused on high-end products, items where people get really excited about having something quite beautiful and something that shows off the materials we’re using,” she says. 

“I think one of the great things about working at Lood and working through our products is that we all get to collaborate as a team. I’m working with all different types of designers with different ages and backgrounds and it’s a really collaborative process,” Oscar says.

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