The year concluded on a high note for our own Sofia Lampropoulou, an AKTO Alumni of the BA (Hons) Product Design program, as she secured two Silver Awards at the London Design Awards 2025. Her two distinctions are detailed below:
Silver Winner in the Fashion Design – Bags category with the project Yiayia.
Silver Winner in the Fashion Design – Innovation category with the project Honey Be.
Honey Be
The Honey Be jewelry collection reinterprets the traditional brooch through modular design and digital fabrication, drawing inspiration from bees, honeycomb geometry, and Coco Chanel’s androgynous aesthetic. Digitally designed and produced with 3D printing, it transforms natural and historical motifs into contemporary jewelry.
The collection includes earrings, rings, a bracelet, and a necklace. The use of PLA and TPU offers lightness, durability & flexibility. The jewelry opens, closes, and adjusts easily to the body without complex mechanisms, while folding flat for easy transport. Honey Be combines cultural reference with digital innovation, proposing a contemporary approach to jewelry design.
Yiayia
The Yiayia project is a transformative handbag, designed to adapt to different carrying methods & visual expressions, reinterpreting traditional weaving art through digital design and 3D printing. The project’s inspiration comes from an authentic Cretan embroidery by the designer’s grandmother, which formed the conceptual and visual foundation of the design.
The digitized embroidery pattern is transformed into a modular TPU surface, which folds and transforms into four different configurations via metal rings. The pattern functions structurally rather than decoratively, determining the bag’s flexibility, load distribution, and use. Yiayia combines tradition, technology, and adaptability, proposing a versatile object that integrates intangible cultural heritage into contemporary lifestyle, transforming it into functional, wearable design.
A few words about the designer
Sofia Lampropoulou is a product designer based in Athens and founder of 3D Season, a contemporary design studio and brand. Her practice focuses on the dialogue between digital technology and craftsmanship, exploring how the precision of 3D printing can coexist with the warmth and materiality of natural media.
With studies at AKTO – BA (Hons) Product Design program – and in Informatics & Telecommunications, her work combines technical knowledge, material research, and emotional storytelling. She is particularly interested in material behavior, tactile qualities, and the small functional gestures that define an object’s relationship with the body and everyday life.
Her work has been presented and awarded in Greece and abroad, and through exhibitions, collaborations, and collections of objects, she aims to create design proposals that balance clarity, functionality, and poetic presence.
Our joy and emotion every time we learn about the distinctions of AKTO Alumni cannot be easily described in words. We are particularly proud of Sofia and her brand 3D Season, and we wish her success in every step!
