Image: Lliam Murphy 

Aussie Home Loans — Transforming the way millions of Australians find, buy, and own a property

Product Design · Web Design

Lendi Group is a mortgage brokerage whose mission is to be the gold standard for how Australians buy, sell, and own a home. When Lendi and Aussie merged in 2021, the first big test for the couple was to migrate aussie.com.au to a new platform by February 2023 with or without ideal conditions to do it justice.

When I stepped into Lendi Group to lead design across the website transformation, they had a solid, trustworthy digital experience but one that didn't provide a strong experience for a customer to move smarter, faster, and with confidence. With more than 1,000 brokers and more than 230 stores at their back, the opportunity was ripe.

The new Aussie Home Loans rates block

The new Aussie Home Loans Navigation

ygap — Designing a campaign to drive big change from small change

Campaign Design · Graphic Design · Web Design

It is in an entrepreneur's nature to turn an opportunity into something that makes a big difference. Building on three years of campaign momentum, I was brought in to help revamp the next phase — developing pitch documentation, driving online fundraising activity, and producing the creative content before it launched across selected sites in Australia.

The new 5cent fundraising page 

Wholesale Investor — One platform, Endless possibilities 

Product Design · Experience Design

Wholesale Investor launched as a magazine and event series in early 2012. Since then, they've been looking at ways to better showcase and offer an end-to-end capital raising solution with powerful tools and intelligent analytics. That is where I came in to inspire investors, break misconceptions and completely shift the table on what's possible with a capital raising.

The new Wholesale Investor mobile experience.

Fitness Everywhere — Designing ‌a ‌new kind of immersive wellness experience

Brand Design · Graphic Design

Fitness Everywhere is a wellness practise and space founded by Aaron Matheson, a former pro ice hockey player turned holistic lifestyle leader whose practice spans the world of yoga, meditation, corrective exercise and psychosomatic therapy. My task was to design a brand presence that could accommodate all of this without being distilled down to a logo.

To offer a brand system that exists in the space between old wisdom and new science, for high performance teams looking for an immersive health experience and a founder who has spent his life breaking the ceiling of wellness.

Fitness Everywhere printed collateral.

Enginehouse Co-Working — Designing a digital start for a local co-working space

Web Design · Video Design

Elliot, ‌Rod ‌and ‌Ryan had stumbled upon a heritage listed Windsor Cable Tram Engine House when they realised what it could be - a co-working space for creatives, entrepreneurs and innovators, no corporate nonsense. They approached me in pre-launch and had some basic visuals but needed their first members. Through stakeholder interviews, I learnt what people actually needed from a co-working space and created a custom built WordPress site with bespoke videos from scratch - taking the insights and creating a website that could convert leads into members.

EngineHouse had 75% occupancy within the first 3 months of launch. They have since acquired a second site and were featured in Australian Financial Review and The Age.

Video detail from Enginehouse launch.

Top ‌Five ‌Movement ‌— Creating a podcast to inspire generous leaders.

Content Design • Audio Production • Project Management

'Leading Generous Teams' is a podcast featuring Clare Desira of the Top Five Movement, that unpacks how leaders cared for their teams through complexity and crisis - and found their own feet in the process. Season two featured community and for-purpose leaders Simon Griffiths of Who Gives a Crap and Michelle Murphy of Ambulance Victoria amongst others, having an honest discussion about what COVID-19 required of them in leadership.

I took full creative control of season two, recording to release, with the intention of leaving listeners feeling energised, not burnt out. Season two had a 20% audience growth over season one. Feedback from Clare: "I felt encouraged and supported through the whole series."

Podcast detail from season 2 of Leading Generous Teams. 

Posture Form — ‌Creating a campaign for the healthiest pillow on the planet

Brand Design · Content Design · Digital Marketing

Lone and Andrew Lawson spent years seeing medical interventions unavailable to the masses and sleep products failing to deliver. In 2004 they set out to create the product they had always wished existed — a corrective pillow designed for the body, not the face.

By 2020 the product existed, but the brand was in need of an update to enable direct to consumer, rather than wholesale, sales. I was tasked with developing the content strategy and creative assets for a campaign, primarily on Instagram and Facebook, to build the visual identity and content assets to shift the brand from a medical one to a lifestyle one.

The campaign in 2020 resulted in a 35% increase in sales of the main pillow product, compared to the previous financial year.

Campaign documentation for Posture Form.

Hop, ‌Skip ‌& ‌Jump — Designing a way of making it to Mongolia

Brand Identity · Website Design · Content Design

In 2015, three classically trained industrial designers wondered, is there a universal language of making? To test, they embarked on the Mongol Rally, a 14,000 kilometre odyssey spanning 16 countries, making things along the way — repairs, gifts, conversation pieces, items to trade — the only limit really being to keep going.

I was responsible for the digital campaign for the project, working on the brand identity, website design, content creation (video and photographic) to drive online engagement, and sponsor liaison. We successfully crowdfunded A$8,785 in contributions.

As for the universal language of making, they didn't quite uncover the answer. As one of the explorers noted, it probably wouldn't have been as fun otherwise.

Campaign visuals during the experience. 

State of Design Festival — A pirate radio tower for Victoria's design community

Visual Design · Industrial Design · Print Production

In 2011, the State of Design Festival hosted one of its more unusual installations. A 40 foot shipping container that was converted into a pirate radio tower which broadcasted for 21 days non-stop interviews, performances and dialog about local designers, architects, photographers, poets and musicians. It was conceived based on David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest and was the brainchild of architect and artist Adam Kalkin.

My role was to design the visual components of the installation, which included the promotional pop-up boombox cards, volunteer's shirts and bags, and the exterior signage which adorned the structure in the same bold geometric print as the shipping container. The activation was an effective way to raise additional creative funding for Victoria, and featured local talent such as Pat Fox, Taboo Agency and Chunky Move.

Product detail from Pirate Radio Tower activation.

Urban Art Projects — Creative an ‌artwork that unlocks a bit of history.

Industrial Design • Visual Design • Project Management

Bowen Bridge Porphyry Wall is a heritage listed stone wall running for 80 metres under the inner Northern Busway in Brisbane. It also forms part of the Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital. An architecturally integrated screen artwork by local artist Mandy Ridley was installed, using the hospital's donor boards and the geography of the area to articulate the history of the site, revealing layers of history to the thousands who pass by daily on foot or in cars.

My role at Urban Art Projects involved design detailing and fabrication management of the anodised laser-cut aluminium screen was my responsibility at this company from concept to completion.

The artwork received a Regional Commendation in Art and Architecture by the Australian Institute of Architects in 2010.

Panel detail from Mandy Ridley original artwork.

Melbourne Bike Share — Designing a new platform for Melbourne's bikes in blue

Product Design · Experience Design

Melbourne's bike share scheme had been part of the city's inner-suburb landscape since the early 2010s — but the platform had not kept pace with how people actually moved around the city. As part of the Random Hacks of Kindness hackathon, I redesigned the experience over 48 hours to better connect riders with local businesses, mindful routes, and a more rewarding reason to choose two wheels over other forms of transport. The concept placed "Cycle and Activity" categories at the forefront — turning a utility app into something closer to a city guide. The project placed third in the competition.

Sadly, The Melbourne Bike Share program was sunset by the Victorian Government in 2019.

A concept experience for the Melbourne Bike Share mobile app. 

Pavrr — Redefining ‌the digital coaching experience

Product Design · Experience Design

Coaching platforms tend to bloated with features until they are a reminder of what they were created to address — intimidating. I worked with a small group of collaborators to design Pavrr, a platform founded on one core idea: show one thing to do at a time, build momentum slowly, and make progress actually feel possible.

The sleek design and Information Pathways feature, a way for coaches and their clients to traverse knowledge in small, palatable chunks, garnered rave reviews from users, attention from investors, and praise from learning and development experts.

Ultimately, Pavrr did not launch, but the concept proved that less is more when it came to competing against the all-or-nothing approaches of other players in the space.

Experience detail from the Pavrr app.

Zen Manager — Designing a ‌flow back to the financial fundamentals

Product Design · Experience Design

Investment deal sourcing and management can be bloated and fragmented — there's more steps and complexity here than there should be. Zen Manager's aim was to be the tool for private investors to manage their investment portfolio without the need for third party advisors.

The founder wanted to move past a simple marketing website and create a product that felt like a serious investment management platform. I focused on the main user flows (deal discovery, portfolio management, transaction management) and designed a high-fidelity prototype suite that took a complex product concept and made it flowingly investable.

These were used to support Zen Manager's investor pitch efforts.

Experience details from Zen Manager desktop app.

Clutter — Designing an experience to get people sharing

Product Design · Experience Design

In ‌2014, ‌as ‌one of 25 fellows of the first ever Fitzroy Academy four-week intensive incubator program, I observed that technological innovation had permeated all aspects of the consumer landscape, apart from two industries: waste and second-hand retail. Consumer data held enormous promise to make sharing and swapping as seamless as buying new, but the infrastructure to enable this simply wasn't there.

Using consumer data to create a seamless swapping experience, Clutter matched people with what they wanted, and gave their unwanted items a new home. With its personalised, predictive recommendation engine, the platform sought to eliminate the friction and uncertainty that made other swap platforms a chore rather than a find. 

The prototype and concept garnered interest from mentors, advisors and the judging panel at the program's final presentation, validating both the market opportunity and the design.

A concept experience for the Clutter mobile app. 

Thank you for taking a walk in the woods.

SAMUEL HAYWOOD

WHACKED TOGETHER BY SAM HAYWOOD SINCE 2026