Best Design Agencies in New York (2026)

Introduction

New York has more serious design studios than any other American city, and the 14 below cover the range: partner-owned consultancies, network-owned brand firms, exhibition specialists and small Brooklyn offices run by their founders. Each was chosen for the quality of its recent identity, editorial, environmental or digital work.

The past two years brought some notable shifts. Pentagram New York ranked second in D&AD's 2026 Design Agency of the Year table, behind Dentsu, and Pentagram was the only firm to appear twice in the design top ten. 2x4 joined The Independents, the luxury communications group backed by Banijay and Towerbrook, in April 2025. Porto Rocha, still under ten years old, delivered Tinder's first rebrand in nearly a decade in July 2026, and Chermayeff & Geismar & Haviv's America250 mark was everywhere around the Fourth of July.

Every studio here has an active New York office in 2026. The list is unranked. Studios that work mainly on naming and brand strategy are covered on our branding agencies page, so this one favours firms known for design practice in the broader sense.

The best design agencies in New York

1. Pentagram

Independent, partner-owned · New York · pentagram.com

Pentagram describes itself as the world's largest independent design consultancy. It has offices in New York, London, Austin and Berlin and is owned by its partners, each of whom runs their own team and stays the main contact on every project. The New York office came second in D&AD's 2026 Design Agency of the Year ranking.

Recent New York work shows the spread. Paula Scher designed the 2026 Shakespeare in the Park campaign and a new identity for the Queens Tourism Council. Emily Oberman created the identity and exhibition design for De Niro Con, Natasha Jen developed a new identity and brand architecture for Pfizer, and Giorgia Lupi published a visual essay in The New York Times in September 2026. Because each partner effectively runs a studio within the studio, it helps to choose the partner before the firm.

2. COLLINS

Independent · New York · wearecollins.com

Brian Collins founded COLLINS after leaving Ogilvy, and it has become one of the most awarded American brand design firms of the past decade. The studio states it has been named Agency of the Year eight times by Ad Age and D&AD, and Ad Age profiled it again on its 2026 A-List. It also keeps an office in San Francisco.

Its work tends toward large consumer brands moving upmarket. Clients include Bose, Robinhood, Figma, Crocs, Nike, Red Wing Shoes and YouTube Gaming, along with a run of Target's own brands such as up&up and Room Essentials. The earlier Spotify identity is still one of its best-known projects.

3. Order

Independent, founder-led · Brooklyn · order.design

Order is a small design office founded by Jesse Reed and Hamish Smyth, both formerly at Pentagram. It has offices in Brooklyn and Miami. The founders also run Standards Manual, the imprint that reissued the NASA and New York City Transit Authority graphics standards manuals, and in September 2025 they launched standards.site, a free tool for building brand guidelines.

Clients have included MoMA, Herman Miller, Kickstarter, Google, Apple, Williams College and The Frick Collection. The studio is a good fit for organisations that want a rigorous identity system and well-made guidelines, with a principle on its homepage of doing "everything for a reason, never for decoration".

4. Porto Rocha

Independent, founder-led · Brooklyn · portorocha.com

Leo Porto and Felipe Rocha run Porto Rocha from Brooklyn, with a second office in London and a team of around 60. The studio ranked as the number two design agency in the US and North America in the 2025 D&AD awards, where its Nike Run refresh took a Yellow Pencil.

In July 2026 it launched Tinder's first rebrand in nearly a decade, with a new all-caps wordmark, a sharper flame and an advice-columnist character called T. Other recent clients include Robinhood, W Hotels, Netflix (Tudum and the Netflix Is A Joke festival), PAC NYC, Kunsthalle Basel and MASP in São Paulo.

5. Wolff Olins

Omnicom · Midtown East · wolffolins.com

Wolff Olins is a London-founded brand consultancy, owned by Omnicom since 2001 and now in its seventh decade. Its New York office is on Third Avenue, and the firm also has studios in London, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Global executive creative director Emma Barratt sat on the Cannes Lions 2026 Design shortlisting jury.

New York cultural work is a strength. The firm refreshed the identity of the New York Botanical Garden and has worked with The Metropolitan Museum of Art on its visual identity and brand architecture. Commercial clients include Blank Street, Patreon, Decathlon, Benefit and LG Electronics. As an Omnicom company it can draw on the wider group, which suits large organisations with complex portfolios.

6. Base Design

Independent network · Financial District · basedesign.com

Base was founded in Brussels in 1993 and now runs studios in New York, Brussels, Geneva, Melbourne and Saigon. The New York office is on South William Street. The firm's work spans identity, retail, digital and editorial design, with a particular following in fashion, hospitality and culture.

In 2026 Base launched The Hyundai Hi, a discovery-led shopping platform for the South Korean department store, covered by Creative Review and WWD. Other recent projects include identities for Highlands Coffee, KANAL in Brussels and Samsara, the last featured in Fast Company in August 2026.

7. Athletics

Independent · Brooklyn · athleticsnyc.com

Athletics started in a former boxing gym in Williamsburg and now calls itself a brand innovation studio, working across strategy, identity systems and digital products. Chief creative officer Malcolm Buick leads much of its sport and culture work.

In January 2026 the studio launched a new identity for Sporting Club GJØA, New York's oldest youth soccer club, alongside its Nike kit deal. It also designed the identity system for the USL's three leagues. Other clients include Salesforce, Google Chrome, Amazon Design, IBM, MoMA, the New Museum and Major League Soccer.

8. Gretel

Independent · Bedford-Stuyvesant · gretelny.com

Gretel is an independent branding, strategy and design studio based on Clifton Place in Brooklyn. It is known for identities with a strong motion element, often for media and entertainment clients.

Its tenth-anniversary identity for New York City FC, built on a subway-inspired custom typeface made with Frere-Jones Type, won a D&AD Wood Pencil in 2025. Earlier work includes the first new identity in 112 years for Kodansha, Japan's largest publisher, and a redesign of MasterClass. Recent projects include the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the retailer Finer Sounds.

9. Mother Design

Independent, part of Mother · Gowanus · motherdesign.com

Mother Design is the design arm of the independent Mother group, with studios in Brooklyn, London and Los Angeles. It works at the scale of a large brand consultancy while sharing a culture with the advertising side of the business, which Ad Age named its Independent Agency Network of the Year in 2026.

In 2025 it delivered a new identity for Adobe, merging the 'A' and wordmark into one logotype, and a global rebrand of Scribd. Other clients include Nike, Target, Cadillac, MarketWatch, Tripadvisor and the BBC. In New York it designed the Brooklyn Org identity pro bono.

10. 2x4

The Independents · Hudson Square · 2x4.org

2x4 was founded in 1994 by Michael Rock, Susan Sellers and Georgianna Stout, who still lead it as executive creative directors. The studio works from Varick Street and Beijing and covers branding, digital, environmental design, exhibitions and signage. It joined The Independents in April 2025, with the founders stating that its approach would stay intact.

The client list leans toward luxury and culture: Prada and Fondazione Prada, Chanel, Calvin Klein, Ginori 1735, the Guggenheim, The Met, MoMA PS1 and the Princeton University Art Museum. It also handled Instagram's global rebrand.

11. Chermayeff & Geismar & Haviv

Independent · Flatiron · cghnyc.com

Chermayeff & Geismar & Haviv is one of the oldest identity practices in the country, responsible for marks such as NBC, Chase, National Geographic, PBS and the Smithsonian. The firm works from West 24th Street, with partner Sagi Haviv leading most current projects.

Its recent work has been unusually visible. The firm designed the America250 identity for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, celebrated in July 2026, and in November 2025 the ATP unveiled an evolved logo by the studio, rolling out across men's professional tennis through 2026. It suits organisations that want a durable mark more than a campaign look.

12. Local Projects

MTM · Financial District · localprojects.com

Local Projects is an experience design studio for museums and public spaces, founded by Jake Barton in 2001 and part of the MTM network since 2019. Its office is on William Street. It is best known for the media design of the 9/11 Memorial and Museum and for its work with Diller Scofidio + Renfro on the Cooper Hewitt.

Recent projects include the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library in North Dakota, the UN Geneva Visitor Center, the Shockoe Institute's "Expanding Freedom" exhibition in Richmond and "Camouflage: Designed to Deceive" at the International Spy Museum. It is the clear choice on this list for interactive exhibitions and environmental storytelling.

13. Champions Design

Independent, founder-led · East Village · championsdesign.com

Jennifer Kinon and Bobby C. Martin Jr. founded the studio in 2010 as Original Champions of Design and renamed it Champions Design in 2020. It works on Avenue A and covers naming, strategy, identity, custom typography and wayfinding.

The studio is known for the Girl Scouts rebrand, the WNBA identity and a redesign of Ad Age, and Kinon was design director on Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign. Recent work includes the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, the Lower East Side Film Festival, Eater and a historical design project on the NBA's pioneers.

14. Hyperakt

Independent, women-owned · Brooklyn · hyperakt.com

Hyperakt is a certified women-owned business that works almost entirely for foundations, nonprofits and mission-driven organisations. It covers identity, websites, data visualisation and visual storytelling.

Clients include the Ford Foundation, The New York Community Trust, NYCLU, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International USA, Girls Who Code, Sesame Workshop and DonorsChoose. Its NYCLU work was a 2025 Webby nominee, and its Ford Foundation and New York Community Trust rebrands won Bronze at the 2024 Transform Awards.

What to look for in a New York design agency

Decide what kind of design you need before you shortlist. An identity system, a museum exhibition, an annual report and a product interface call on different skills, and New York studios tend to specialise even when their websites list everything. Look for three or four projects close to your own brief, and ask who led each one.

Structure matters as much as talent. At a partner-led firm such as Pentagram you are hiring a specific partner and their team. At a network-owned consultancy such as Wolff Olins you get research, strategy and global rollout under one roof, at a corresponding price. Smaller founder-led offices like Order or Champions Design will usually put the founders on your project directly.

Ask how the work will live after launch. A good identity comes with guidelines, templates and source files your own team can use, and studios differ a lot in how much of that they deliver. Agree early on formats, type licences and who owns the final files.

Finally, look at how the studio runs reviews. Identity and editorial projects pass through many rounds of PDFs, mock-ups and type tests, and environmental work adds drawings and samples. Studios with a clear process for sharing work, collecting comments and recording approvals tend to keep projects on schedule, and give the client one place to find the latest version.

How Fabric helps design agency teams

Fabric gives a design studio one workspace for its files, references and client feedback, with AI search across all of it. Most studios hold years of identity work, type tests and presentation decks spread across drives, and the setup for design and UI/UX agencies keeps each client's assets, briefs and notes together.

Large layered files and image libraries sit in Fabric's cloud drive, which streams files on demand so they take no local disk space. Search works by meaning across documents, images and PDFs, and colour search finds visual assets by shade. Similar search surfaces related work by composition, colour and subject, which helps when building a moodboard on the canvas, where Figma files can be embedded next to images and notes.

For reviews, clients can leave threaded comments through a shared link without creating an account, and annotations let them highlight and comment directly on PDFs and documents. Drawing on images is listed as coming soon. Finished guidelines can be published as a web page from the source folder, so the live version updates when the files do. There is more on this in Fabric's guide to hosting brand guidelines.

For pitches and presentations, password protection and link analytics show when each named recipient opened a deck and how long they spent with it.

Password protection and link analytics are included on Pro and Team plans. See plans for teams.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best design agency in New York?

It depends on the type of work. On 2026 recognition, Pentagram New York ranked second in D&AD's global Design Agency of the Year table, and Porto Rocha was the second-ranked design agency in North America at D&AD 2025. For exhibitions, Local Projects has the deepest record in the city.

What is the difference between a design agency and a branding agency?

The two overlap heavily. Design agencies tend to cover a wider range of output, such as editorial, exhibition, signage and digital work, while branding agencies focus more on strategy, naming and positioning. Our list of branding agencies in New York covers the second group.

How much does a New York design studio charge for a brand identity?

Fees vary widely and few studios publish them. Small founder-led offices often price identity projects in the tens of thousands of dollars, while large consultancies working on global rollouts charge far more. Ask for a scoped proposal that lists deliverables, rounds of review and file handover.

Who owns Pentagram?

Pentagram is owned by its partners. There are no outside shareholders, and each partner leads their own team and acts as the main contact for their clients.

Which New York design studios work with nonprofits and cultural institutions?

Hyperakt works almost entirely for foundations and nonprofits. Champions Design, 2x4, Local Projects and Chermayeff & Geismar & Haviv all have long records with museums and cultural organisations, and Pentagram's New York partners work regularly with the Public Theater and other city institutions.

Related lists

Design agencies in other cities: Los Angeles · London · San Francisco · Berlin · Amsterdam

More in New York: Creative agencies · Branding agencies · UX design agencies · Advertising agencies · Animation · Photography studios

Run your studio on Fabric: Fabric for designers · Fabric for agencies · Best design feedback tools