zai thakoor
MFA PRODUCTS OF DESIGN
School of Visual Arts SVA
Specialisms: Graphic Design / Interaction Design / Creative Direction
Location: New York, United States
zai thakoor
First Name: zai
Last Name: thakoor
Specialisms: Graphic Design / Interaction Design / Creative Direction
Sectors:
My Location: New York, United States
University / College: School of Visual Arts SVA
Course / Program Title: MFA PRODUCTS OF DESIGN
About
Zai Thakoor is a Brooklyn-based brand and experience designer with over 5 years of experience working across India and the US. She specializes in crafting identity systems, visual storytelling, and user-centered brand ecosystems. Zai has designed for food, wellness, education, and cultural sectors—bringing together strategy and emotion in equal parts. She is an alum of MIT Institute of Design, Pune and recently completed her MFA at the School of Visual Arts in New York. She currently co-runs a studio called Lunch Special and works at the intersection of brand and experience design.
Sow: Lowering the barrier to self-repair
Sow is an app that responds to this gap. It helps users build the habit of repairing broken items by offering step-by-step guides, simple logging tools, and light progress tracking—reframing repair as something approachable, repeatable, and worth returning to. While Sow lives on your phone, behavior change doesn’t happen digitally alone. As a companion to the app, I prototyped simple physical tools—like mending stencils and stitch stands—that make repair tactile and inviting.
Competitions
Global Creative Graduate Showcase 2025
How do we bring repair into everyday life—not as a burden, but as a practice of care? Air It Out is a public-facing intervention designed to be embedded in the overlooked corners of routine life—like the neighborhood laundromat. It explores how brands, landlords, and community spaces might design better end-of-use experiences. And to understand what “threshold to care” really means in the context of everyday maintenance.
Competitions