The chief creative director for the award-winning British brand talks about how Pooky’s colorful, whimsical…
Read More →
Behind the Design: Pooky’s Jo Plant
The chief creative director for the award-winning British brand talks about how Pooky’s colorful, whimsical vibe is influencing lighting design in the U.S. and what this year’s acquisition by Visual Comfort & Co. might mean for the creative process.
By Julie A. Palm
Although Pooky Lighting is well-established in the United Kingdom, Jo Plant thinks of the lighting brand as a “toddler” in the U.S. market: a colorful, uninhibited, whimsical toddler.
“We’re young. We’re fun. We’re kind of disruptors,” says Plant, the company’s chief creative director. “We have that sort of irreverent edge to Pooky. We’re all about choosing your own style and creating your own look. … But we’re also very serious about what we do. I hope that in the market, we will be known for our core principles – which have never really changed – which is to make the best quality lighting we can for the best possible price and to give the customer a product they want to keep and use.”
Pooky, which was founded in Glocester, England, in 2014 and entered the U.S. market two years ago, is best known for its lamps and mix-and-match shades, including a growing line of cordless rechargeables. But it also offers a wide range of ceiling and wall fixtures, as well as outdoor lighting.
Plant says Pooky wants consumers to think about lighting in a more “lighthearted way,” but not in a trendy, fast-fashion way. “The last thing we want to be is any kind of throwaway brand,” she says.
In May, Visual Comfort & Co., purchased Pooky. Lighting News Now talked with Plant about how Pooky fosters its creative spirit and what the acquisition means for the company’s design direction.
Human-centered design
Plant joined Pooky more than 10 years ago and was promoted to her current position in January 2025. She says she loves the job — enough to spend three hours driving back and forth from her home in Oxford to Pooky’s headquarters in Gloucester.
“So, it’s a long, long journey, but it’s so worth it because when we’re all in the office together, it’s really good and collaborative,” Plant says. “We’re in a big open-plan office and everyone shares ideas. … I love working with the team here.”
At Pooky, Plant oversees the creative process; leads the design team and mentors younger designers; supports marketing efforts; and helps to manage manufacturing and the supply chain. (“We started as a small company,” she says, “and there’s still lots of crossover between creative director and operations.”)
“There are so many strands to the job, and it’s crazy some days but I’m very grateful to be doing it,” Plant says.
The emblem of Pooky’s creative process is a corkboard wall in company’s design office, which is filled not just with product ideas but with production dates, whether for major collection launches or magazine deadlines.
“There are so many ideas and we’re really lucky because we’re quite creative and Pooky is not constrained too much,” Plant says. “We want to sell lighting to everybody — we can do something that’s very minimal or some that is completely the opposite.”
The company was recognized for its design work earlier this year, when it won an ARTS Award in the Lamps category, which included better-known brands such as Arteriors, Couture Lamps and Home Furnishings, and Quoizel as finalists.
When she’s sitting down to design, Plant says she’s “a pencil and paper girl,” who finds flying to be an especially fertile time for creativity.
“I’m old school, she says. “I have a little notebook … I make loads of little sketches — shapes, the beginning of an idea. I’ll think, ‘Oh, maybe that’s good.’ Then sometimes I look back and think, ‘Oh, my god! What were you thinking?’” The good ideas get translated to pads of graph paper and shown to others on the team, including the team’s CAD expert “who understands my madness,” Plant says.
“I’m not a trained designer, but I’ve worked with product for many, many years in different forms and shapes,” she says. “I know what I like and I know what I think looks right. I have a really good feel for scale because I used to do garden design.”
Plant has a fondness for Pooky’s classic Wobster table lamp, a hand-turned solid wood base shaped into what the company describes as a “gloriously bulbous silhouette,” but she keeps a rotating assortment of three lamps on her office desk — two wired lamps and a cordless lamp. “I think my favorites change all the time,” she says.
Like many creative directors, Plant spends much of her time in meetings and dealing with management aspects of her job, but with the recent hiring of designer Sophie Amini, “we’re going to take two of those days in the middle of the week, and we’re going to lock ourselves away and design — away from the team, away from all the distractions,” Plant says. “… It’s really a luxury to get that time to sit down and formulate what we’re doing, where we’re going and how we’re going to do it. With product, it’s really important to get that creative time. … We’re a product-led business, so it’s important to keep new ideas coming and to be creating all of the time.”
Pooky has embraced artificial intelligence tools for data-driven projects, but Plant has been reluctant to introduce AI into the design process.
“I feel really strongly that people connect with Pooky’s products because there’s something very handmade about them,” she says. “We’re humans designing for humans.”
Designer collaborations
The company collaborates with a wide range of designers and designer brands, including Matthew Williamson, Morris & Co., GP & J Baker, Collaborative Craft Projects, Studio Killian-Dawson and The Novogratz.
At the High Point Market in April, Pooky showcased its latest collection with longtime collaborator, Ellen Merchant, a British artist and textile designer. Merchant described the handmade lampshades – which are based on Merchant’s fabric and wallpaper patterns – as reimagining “the traditional spring floral by pairing playful botanical silhouettes with an English countryside palette.”
At the upcoming Hight Point Market in October, Pooky will debut a line designed in partnership with Samuel & Sons, a New York-based producer of fabric trims and tassels.
“They’re a wonderful company, and we’ve got a fun collaboration coming up with them,” Plant says. “… We’ve come up with a range of products that will be fixtures, as well as shades, and we’re really excited about that. It’s going to be great and we’re really looking forward to it.”
Pooky times its largest U.S. launches for the fall and another significant launch for the spring, but changes in how consumers shop for lighting has increased the frequency of its product introductions.
“Customers really respond well to newness, so we’ve kind of split the launches over the year,” Plant says. “We try to add new products for customers to engage with at different places, at different points, so we’ll have things that launch every month, actually. We may not shout about them, but there’s always something new.”
New ownership
One of the newest things at Pooky is its ownership. When officially announcing the acquisition, Visual Comfort founder and CEO Andy Singer and Pooky founder Rohan Blacker said jointly, “we have long admired and respected one another’s brands, creative perspectives and contributions to the world of lighting. This partnership brings together two complementary points of view, while allowing Pooky to continue operating independently with the same creative spirit, character and distinctive approach that have made the brand so special. Together, we look forward to introducing Pooky to a broader audience through the reach of the Visual Comfort platform.”
Beginning this summer, Pooky products are being showcased in Visual Comfort’s direct showrooms and also will be part of Visual Comfort’s trade network.
In the announcement, the companies also said, “at this time, no operational changes are planned for customers, partners or business operations. Both companies will continue operating business as usual.”
“One of the reasons that they bought Pooky is because we’re so different and we can work together very well without cannibalizing each other’s businesses,” Plant says. “We’re a different price point, but we’re also just a very different company. Pooky is all color and choice, and Visual Company is very minimal and chic. … I think we’ll definitely learn something for sure from each other. … It’s always good when you design and talk to other people who design and care about product — you’re always going to learn something.”
Plant says the teams of the two companies are in the getting-to-know-you stage and she’s hopeful about the new ownership.
In addition to adapting to new ownership, Pooky continues to adapt, too, to the U.S. market, including understanding the design preferences of various regions of the country. And although Pooky has only been in the U.S. market for a couple of years, Plant says she believes the company has helped usher in a design direction that includes more patterned lampshades.
“That’s exciting because I feel like we have definitely been part of that trend that is growing in the States,” she says. “I think the whole mix-and-match look and the whole very individual kind of look is going to grow and grow. … I think showing your personality in your home is important. … People are getting braver in their homes and I love that. That makes me very happy.”
Related articles