Bound together by their taste for the bizarre, sparkly, kitsch, trashy and colourful, Anna Lomax and Lauren Davies, both 27, first bumped sketchbooks at the University of Brighton. They founded their design studio Jiggery Pokery in 2007, and have since applied their creative talents to everything from window displays to music videos; editorial shoots to promotional campaigns, studio exhibitions to interior design. High-profile clients include Vauxhall, Nike, Topshop, Beck’s and The Independent.
First things first: why the name Jiggery Pokery?
Anna: Because it made us think of blagging things, Del Boy cocktails, wheeler-dealering and razzle dazzle.
Lauren: At least with a name like Jiggery Pokery people always remember who we are. Even the people at the bank laugh at us when we call them up.
Can you rewind a few years and tell us how it all started?
Lauren: We were both doing illustration at the University of Brighton. One summer, most of our friends had gone home and we ended up doing loads of joke projects together: making things, taking pictures, buying weird stuff from flea markets.
Anna: That was probably mainly thanks to our university tutors, who never just said “design a pamphlet”; they always encouraged us to be as creative and conceptual as possible. If we had a small idea, they would be like, “Why don’t you blow it up really huge and put it on a wall somewhere?” They really taught us to come out of our sketchbooks – and that’s what we’ve taken with us into our professional lives.
A Jiggery Pokery shoot from The Independent magazine
What was your first big break?
Anna: Getting approached by the Young Creative Network, a platform for young designers, illustrators and artists to get into work. It bridges the gap between being a university student and becoming a professional.
Lauren: The first job they gave us was to make 250 individually designed piñatas and then send them out to 200 universities and 50 design studios with our name on them. That’s how people first got to know about us – and indirectly led to us being on the front cover of the Creative Review this month.
Who or what has most influenced your style?
Lauren: Everything we do is very much informed by our childhood: bedtime stories, dreams, making dens, TV programmes like Art Attack, Itsa Bitsa and Bertha. There is a lot of playfulness and imagination in our work.
Anna: Also, Nineties TV programmes like The Word and Eurotrash, before all the 3D technology came out. They always had that dodgy, wobbly scenery; it wasn’t all streamlined and perfect like it is now. You could see all the imperfections – and that’s what we’re interested in: things where you have to use your imagination to let it work.
Where do the best ideas come from?
Lauren: We always have lots of ideas stacked up in our sketchbooks; we carry them everywhere with us. We brainstorm or go to car boot sales and pick up a random object that might spark off an entire design concept.
Anna: We’re huge collectors of stuff: from clown-shaped balloons and old wallpaper to 1950s packaging – you never know what might come in useful.
The Old Blue Last pub in Shoreditch, east London, gets the Jiggery Pokery treatment
What’s the best thing about working as a creative duo?
Anna: We are just a bit greedy. The fact that there are two of us gives us more scope to make weird and wonderful stuff. Individually we might not be as big or bold, but together we’re more confident about pushing our boundaries.
Lauren: Also, if we were working on our own, we definitely wouldn’t have taken some of the more “ambitious” jobs that we have. If something feels scary or goes horribly wrong, it’s nice to have someone to go to the pub with afterwards and go, “Oh my god, that was awful” and be able to laugh about it. In this line of work, it’s always good to have allies rather than enemies. Every production is a collaboration – and that’s a good thing to learn early on.
What are the weirdest and most wonderful places you’ve ever worked?
Anna: Part of the joy of what we do is that we never work in the same place; I think I’d kill myself in an office job. We’ve designed sets in a derelict children’s hospital, rat-infested warehouses, under a tarpaulin in the pouring rain. It’s fun, but it’s not glamorous.
Lauren: Apart from when Nike took us to Switzerland and put us up in a luxurious five-star hotel – that was pretty amazing.
Speaking of Nike, how difficult is it to strike the right balance between the commercial and the creative?
Lauren: In the beginning, the commercial route has to be done. It’s the only way you’ll be able to make a living – but you do have to be careful not to let it take over, otherwise you end up selling your soul. You’ve got to stay true to yourself.
Anna: We’re hoping that at some point along the line, people will start to come to us for what we do, rather than getting us to do what they want us to do.
What advice would you give to someone starting out in the industry?
Lauren: We got some great advice from music video director Ron Norsworthy, who we met on one of our first jobs in New York. He said, “If you have ideas, never close the box: they will become useful at some point in time”. Another motto we got from designer Anthony Burrill is “Work hard and be nice”. It sounds simple, but it really works!
Anna: Making and keeping contacts is so important. If you want to work for someone, send your portfolio; cold-call them, send them something so interesting and nice that they won’t be able to throw it away. If they say no, keep going back. And don’t get put off by nasty people. Once we called this set designer and she said, “OK so I’ve seen your website, but what do you do in the real world?” We’d just graduated and we were like, “Er, this is what we do in the real world!”
Visit www.jiggerypokery.biz for more information.
Jiggery Pokery were talking to Sarah Harris