Locki Humphrey sits foregrounded against a large industrial shelving unit, lined in furniture pieces. To the left is the Bound Chair (2022), easily recognisable for its curving backrest of waxed stainless steel and hand-woven Danish cord seat. To the right sits its cousin – a Bound Stool with an eye-catching blue powder coated base. It’s a visual, at-a-glance CV of Locki’s practice, and a fitting setting for discussing their 2025 win at The (Emerging) Designer Awards.

Locki last year received the Product Design award, recognised by the jurors for their exceptional ability to merge innovation with artistry, and the impact this has had on Australia’s contemporary design scene. “Their work demonstrates a fresh exploration of unconventional and sustainable materials, reimagined in ways that feel both surprising and purposeful,” the Jurors noted.

Championing Australian manufacturing and designing for deconstruction, Locki’s furniture and lighting pieces challenge convention, and are a direct result of their intrepid journey into the realm of professional design.

From running music venues to studying neuroscience, working hospitality and a stint specialising in upholstery, Locki found their way to Melbourne during the pandemic, where they self trained in CGI three-dimensional applications. From here Locki embarked on furniture and chair design projects, honing their skills, challenging their expectations, pursuing their ideas.

Taking the leap into design they started responding to exhibition call-outs, submitting design concepts in rendered format, until “one of them got picked! I was like, damn I have to make this thing, and so I did and it got a really good response”, says Locki.

Through grit, persistence and curiosity, they’ve come to be recognised for challenging traditional boundaries while maintaining a strong sense of coherence and vision. This could be attributed to their love of problem solving, and the joy they take in unlocking particularly frustrating challenges.

“I think there’s a certain strength in being self-taught – you have a little more laxity towards the constraints of design, because you’re not necessarily putting expectations on how something should be shaped or function,” they say. While this path can be fraught with iteration and failure, Locki has never let go of their inner drive to resolve a tricky equation. “You need to keep going, to constantly refine and push and reach the level of expectation you set for yourself. You just have to keep going and going,” they say.

Locki’s process is driven by both intuition and intention, manifesting through an exploration of material, colour, texture, proportion and the potential of recycled materials. “Their designs not only push the materiality conversation forward, they also reflect an inspiring sensitivity to culture and environment,” noted the Jury last year.

Winning the 2025 Product Design award gave Locki the opportunity to receive a contract with Australian design brand, New Volumes, and have a product be produced and brought into the brand’s permanent collection. It’s a rare break for any emerging product designer – to join a stable of Australia’s finest creatives and accelerate their design career in the process.

“I was excited about this award win, because of the opportunity to work and collaborate with a brand and bring a design to life. That’s where I want my practice to move. To produce gorgeous work that is commercially viable. Working with a brand like New Volumes has given me a view into that process and understand how it works,” says Locki.

Entering awards is both a reflective and self-critical exercise, they say. It pushes you to self-interrogate and refine your practice. “That process of constantly assessing and picking apart and thinking about your designs, and constantly refining and refining, so you can package it up in a way that someone else can understand on paper… It’s quite hard, really frustrating, and the more you do it, the more you understand your own practice.”

That commitment to keep pushing and not shy away from self-critique will continue to see Locki’s practice grow from strength to strength. The question now being, where will that bold combination of creativity, craftsmanship, and unconstrained originality take them next? The future is exciting.

Entries for the 2026 (Emerging) Designer Awards are now open, enter here.