Jo Armitage
Embracing colour and vintage vibes: in conversation with retail and commercial interior designer Jo Armitage.
Hi Jo! Can you tell us a little about yourself and your style of work?
Hello! I’m Jo, a retail and commercial interior designer living in sunny Southbourne with my partner Gordon (you’ll find out more about him on page 14) my two kids, two cats and a mad dog called Lenny. I guess I could describe my style as full of colour and pattern, with a nod to past design decades.
Combining my love of vintage and colour is my yellow 1973 MG BGT car, it’s one of my favourite things I own as it encapsulates my style perfectly. As you may have guessed, yellow features heavily in my home interior too! Interior design is a huge part of my life–I’ve spent the past 6 years renovating our 1925 detached house and we’ve completed a kitchen/dining room extension during lockdown, which was recently used as a location house for a shoot with a local agency.
We’d love to know your story. Can you give us a bit of background on your career and some milestones so far?
I studied Fine Art Photography at the Arts University graduating in 2001, but I left knowing I didn’t want to be a commercial photographer. I knew I wanted to have a creative career and so I worked at Lush as a black board signwriter. At the time, Lush was massively expanding, opening two shops a month and growing rapidly internationally. With only three of us doing all the design work, I quickly became an integral part of the Lush family. We designed shops, created, produced and installed all window displays and oversaw new product launches. All with a strict eco and sustainable approach. It was a huge learning period for me, and I gained masses of experience in those early years. I went on to support our global teams and opened shops all over the world. A definite highlight for me was hosting the partners in countries like Japan to showcase our new ideas and design concepts.
The biggest personal milestone was setting up my creative services company, The Beep Studio, when I was pregnant with my daughter. Myself and my business partner David ran Beep for 8 years and successfully created a company with many reputable clients. Starting with not much (a large format printer, enthusiasm and loads of ideas) we worked on many amazing projects and created some really great things whilst building a network of people around us. We closed the studio a few years ago, and I went freelance with my first client being The Design Museum.
What was your most memorable moment in your career?
I would probably say pitching a visual merchandising (VM) strategy to The Design Museum directors and winning the contract. Designing a window display and creating innovative VM for their new museum shops is one of my proudest career moments for sure. There is a photo of the four metre high Vitra shelves I styled that I often see online being circulated as inspiration for VM and shop design.
What is your vision for Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole?
I think BPC has some serious potential to become a creative hotspot and offer a great lifestyle too. There is loads of talk about agencies in the area, but you have to look (as Pier does!) at the creative offering of individuals. I mainly work in London and beyond, but I love the life I can have here by the sea. The town centre needs a lot of work, the council really do need to stop investing in mini golf and look at what can be achieved beyond tourism. The town centre, with the right funding and retail support, could be a thriving area with cool independent shops, cultural hubs for visitors and many fun reasons to visit.
There is enough buzz in Bournemouth all year round, we don’t need to rely on tourism entirely. We can spread the connections and bring the community closer together with large scale events such as the Arts By The Sea festival. Christmas trees are great for bringing in footfall to the town centre, but once there, what do people want to see? No empty shops!
It’s brilliant that BCP Council are supporting cultural things like Giant gallery, but the ‘shopping’ and retail side of things really are dire. I would start with a street at a time, seeing what empty shops could be filled, and create an exciting area for commerce and community alike. A few months ago I was creative lead on a high street project funded by The Mayor Of London. London Made Me–'not another pop-up shop’–was a creative retail accelerator on a mission to tackle empty units on our high streets and support creative businesses at the same time. This pilot project saw 14 creative businesses come together in an intensive four-week programme to learn, build and trade their own collective shop experience on London’s iconic Regent Street. The programme aimed to inspire, tool-up and empower the city’s most exciting creatives to ultimately launch their own curated spaces and help transform our high streets. Imagine if we took a similar scheme, but created a town area with multiple successful shops, that had ongoing support and expertise supplied by industry experts like myself.
Website → joarmitage.co.uk
Instagram → @_joarmitage_
