About
Objct Co design simple and essential products for home, work and play.
We pursue unique and elegant solutions to everyday problems, creating beautiful, useful and enduring products for living. Our mission//
Inspiring designs to help simplify and organise your life
Founded in Melbourne’s post-industrial inner west, Objct Co officially opened online in 2018 with the launch of the LAPOD Lap Desk. With a further series of unique new home accessories and productivity tools in development, we continually maintain our firm commitment to premium quality products designed in Australia.
The Story of the LAPOD Lap Desk
Whilst working on a deadline some time back, Objct Co's founder, Tony Heap, had to bring work home with him on his laptop for several nights in a row. After tiring of being at his home desk at night after sitting at his work desk all day, he thought there must be a better way.
So, he quickly cobbled together a DIY lap desk in order that he could work more comfortably on the sofa in his living room. The only item he could find in the moment was a very large, flat, hard plastic lid with unfortunately sharp injection moulded ribs underneath. It needed to be placed on a cushion to rest on his lap, but he didn’t want the sharp plastic protruding bits to damage the cushion fabric.
More rummaging in the kitchen cupboards offered up a large flexible baking dish, which when placed under the plastic lid meant his rough DIY lap desk was complete - victory! He now felt less like he was still at work and instead more productive and relaxed working in comfort.
After a few nights working at his DIY lap desk, Tony found when he finished work he simply packed away his laptop cables, charger, notes and pens in the baking dish under the plastic lid. And so, the idea for the LAPOD, a LAP desk + storage POD, was born!
About the Founder
Before starting Objct Co, Melbourne-based industrial designer Tony Heap spent 18 years designing for leading manufacturing companies with products ranging from commercial furniture, domestic appliances to bike accessories.
Then, Tony struck upon a niche with a series of product ideas he’d had for relaxing the ever-growing tension between our home and work lives. He quit his day job to become a ‘startup founder’, a ‘design entrepreneur’, or some combo thereof. After innumerable prototyping, testing, building and spreadsheeting, the LAPOD Lap Desk was put into production.
For Tony, good design is when a great idea meets beautiful execution – minimising and unifying form and function into practical simplicity. Or as his grandma would say, "an elegant sufficiency".
