Neil Poulton

Neil Poulton (born 1963) is a Scottish product designer, based in Paris, France.

He specialises in the design of 'deceptively simple-looking mass-produced objects' and has won numerous international design awards.

Poulton is best known for his designs in the fields of technology and lighting design and is often associated with manufacturers LaCie and Artemide.

Time magazine has included Poulton in 'The Design 100 – The people and ideas behind today's most influential design'.

The Centre Georges Pompidou museum in Paris includes six Poulton-designed objects in its Permanent Contemporary Collection.

Poulton gained a BSc degree in Industrial Design (technology) at Napier University in Edinburgh in 1985 and was awarded the SIAD Chartered Society of Designers Student Product Designer of the Year.

In 1988, he gained a master's degree in design at the Domus Academy in Milan, Italy, under Italian architect Andrea Branzi and designer Alberto Meda.

Poulton's tutors included Italian architect Ettore Sottsass, German industrial designer Richard Sapper, Isao Hosoe and Anna Castelli Ferrieri.

Neil Poulton first came to public view in 1989 as the creator of the 'Ageing Pens'.

Also known as the 'Penna Mutante' (The Mutant Pen), these pens were made from a living, wearing plastic, which 'ages as layers of colour wear away through use'.

The Ageing Pens were exhibited in London's Victoria and Albert Museum, Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and The Axis Gallery in Tokyo.

Neil Poulton has lived and worked in Paris since 1991.

Poulton worked briefly for French designer Philippe Starck in Paris from 1991 through 1992.

Poulton has been a guest speaker and visiting professor at schools including Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London, the Domus Academy in Milan and the University of Western Australia in Perth, Australia.

He is an active, if occasional, jury member of the École nationale supérieure de création industrielle (Les Ateliers) in Paris and has judged design degrees at the École de design Nantes Atlantique.

Poulton's designs have won numerous awards, including seven French "Etoile de l'Observeur du Design" prizes, twelve German Red Dot Design Awards, five German "IF" International Forum Design prizes, three French "Janus de l'industrie" awards, two "Recommendation Premio Compasso d'Oro" and the "Best of The Best" Red Dot Design Awards in 1994 and 2007.

His first major solo exhibition 'design by neil poulton' was held in the Glyptotheque (Zagreb) museum in 2013.

In November 2013, the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts presented "design by neil poulton", the first major solo exhibition of designer Neil Poulton, in Zagreb, Croatia.

Held in the main 360-metre square gallery of the ground floor of the Glyptotheque (Zagreb) museum, the exhibition was sponsored by the Croatian Ministry of Culture, the City of Zagreb and the Institut français.

‘In this exhibition, the design process is represented in all its stages from sketches, models and prototypes, through production components to final products, documenting the author's integrated approach to design'

Poulton's Scopas lamp for Artemide was inaugurated into the first Permanent Scottish Gallery of V&A Dundee, Scotland, in 2018.

Poulton has also been a judge of international design competitions including the 'IF' International Forum Design Award and the Hong Kong Design Award (HKDA) in 2018.

In 2019 Neil Poulton was named one of le FD100 – the 100 designers who are sharing French Design all over the world.

In 2019 Poulton was inducted into the Edinburgh Napier University Alumni Hall Of Fame.