Raw.Studio | Strategy, UX UI & Branding Agency

Branding, design systems, product design, you name it! At Raw.Studio, I bring my experience and skills in all three areas to lead and create a holistic design direction and strategy for digital products and brands who seek to disrupt their industry.

My responsibilities include:
• Plan and facilitate workshops to align and unpack client needs, translating them into clear requirements, business objectives, and actionable design briefs.
• Lead a team of product designers and UX researchers, mentoring best practices in UX, UI, design systems, and design craft — raising the bar for quality and consistency.
• Define and lead design strategy and direction, ensuring alignment with project goals, client needs, user expectations, and business objectives.
• Facilitate & translate user research into insights, concepts, user flows, designs, and prototypes.
• Design seamless, end-to-end UX journeys with a focus on customer needs and business impact.
• Deliver end-to-end projects efficiently, balancing speed with exceptional quality and attention to detail.
• Adapt across industries, covering all types of projects — from brand design to marketing websites to mobile-first app experiences.
• Build interactive prototypes to support sales pitch for fund raising and UX research (such as A/B testing).
• Establish and evolve scalable design systems for clients, ensuring efficiency, consistency, and brand alignment.
• Present work confidently to clients and internal teams, clearly communicating rationale and design decisions.
• Build trust and strong rapport with clients as a design partner and consultant.
• Collaborate closely with developers to ensure designs are feasible, accessible, and implemented to a high standard.
• Maintain high proficiency in Figma and design systems, applying design thinking methodologies throughout.

Design Lead

Self-Employed

On the side, I design brand identities and strategies for small local businesses and creatives. My process includes:
• understanding the needs and wants of the client
• conducting research and analysis on the brand’s position in the competitive industry and market
• identifying the brand’s vision and values
• developing and presenting concepts for logo and other brand elements
• applying brand on print and digital collaterals
• providing ready-to-print files

Freelance Brand Designer

Lendi

I was the design lead for the newly established design system team. Our team’s focus was building a design system that was accessible and usable for our customers, but also would improve the efficiency and productivity of our consumer’s work and process (designers and developers).

A few of my key responsibilities included:
• leading and establishing a collaborative design process for the team
• creating a backlog of components that was relevant and driven by real use cases in our platform experience
• leading and prioritising our backlog and getting buy-in from our stakeholders
• leading design decisions and ensuring team is focused on meeting OKR
• leading the end-to-end design process of design foundations and components
• collaborating with developers on build solutions, such as API sparring 
• managing design tools and governance
• leading visual design of design team and ensuring the right components and patterns are used for consistency

Lendi and Aussie was going through a merge in this time, so our team’s focus was also making sure our platform experience was brand-aware. This meant we had to establish and build a theming mechanism that our components would use. This would enable our platform experience to be seamlessly themed with a simple flick of a switch. Few key responsibilities included:
• informing developers of desired outcome that would inform their solution approach on theming
• establishing semantic layer for our design foundations (typography, colour and border radii)
• supporting developers in build

Design Lead in Design Systems

I was the dedicated product designer for a cross-functional team that focused on collecting information about our customer’s financial situation, needs and wants, so that we can provide the best home loan recommendations that suits them. 

Few key responsibilities included:
• leading and managing the end-to-end design process (from discovery to design handoff)
• managing and aligning stakeholders on design vision and objectives
• collaborating with designers, PM, BA & developers to produce a minimal viable product that is desirable, viable and feasible
• presenting recommended design solutions to product team and execs for review and approval
• storytelling to take team on the journey of the design process and thinking behind design solution.
• documenting design decisions and feedback

Outside of this role, I also worked on:
• design components for CMS
• establishing design foundations and components for Lendi’s new design system 
• pitched and led the buy-in of transitioning from sketch to figma
• established new design process on figma, including creating a component library, file management and more.

Senior Product Designer

THERE

I was part of the environmental branding team that specialises in wayfinding strategy and design. We created user experience in the physical space using visual and digital cues to ensure that they get from point A to B without feeling lost. I was in charge of managing and designing the end-to-end process of translating this into a digital experience.

Few key responsibilities include:
• assisting in developing a wayfinding strategy
• conducting competitive analysis,
• creating user-friendly and interactive maps
• developing and presenting wireframes and prototypes
• constructing tender documentations for final artwork and more

UX/UI designer

Westpac Group

I was part of the customer experience team of St.George Bank Group Internet and Mobile Banking. The team works in a fast-paced environment and we are constantly collaborating with researchers, scrum teams and key stakeholders to deliver an experience that is desirable for our customers, feasible and beneficial for the business.  

A few of my key responsibilities includes:
• developing and presenting wireframes, prototypes and multi-brand visual designs (St.George, Bank of SA and Bank of Melbourne)
• auditing all visual designs produced by the team prior handover to scrum teams to ensure consistency of patterns
• conducting customer research (including but not limited to competitive analysis, usability testing, customer data analysis, NPS)
• regularly presenting ideas and updates in workshops, meetings, presentations, ranging from 1 to over 50+ attendees.

Experience Designer

In this year, Westpac gave me the opportunity to work in multiple teams (research, strategy and delivery) to understand and gain experience in their end-to-end design process.

A few of my responsibilities involved assisting in customer testing, applying qualitative and quantitative research methods to gather customer data, applying design and data analysis methods to identify patterns and insights of this collected data, followed by applying this analysed data to drive decisions and deliver wireframes and prototypes for a multi-brand company (Westpac, St.George, Bank of SA and Bank of Melbourne)

Junior Experience Designer

Worked closely with senior designers and creative director on branded property development and environment projects for clients such as Rabobank, Ovolo Hotel and more. Projects involve understanding and identifying the client's needs; and efficiently developing the best strategy in response to this with design.

Junior Graphic Designer

Understanding the creative process of THERE studio and adapting to assist senior designers in projects. Had the opportunity to lead a project and develop a creative response for the brief.

Graphic Design Intern

Hi, I’m Akina — a designer who’s happiest in crafting beautiful and effortless experiences from  business challenges.

My expertise spans brand strategy, brand identity design, product design (UX/UI), design strategy, leadership, and building design systems — from creating new systems from scratch to translating legacy frameworks into modern, scalable platforms.

Over the past decade, I’ve worked across 10+ industries — from health to fintech, education to travel — adapting to diverse teams, clients, and environments including start-ups, creative agencies, corporates, and small design studios.

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