Best Design Agencies in Vancouver (2026)

Introduction

Vancouver has a compact, well-connected design scene, and the nine studios below cover most of what a client might brief: motion design and animation, exhibit and interpretive design, packaging, wayfinding, editorial and identity systems for cultural institutions. They were chosen for recent work, the strength of their client lists and a verified studio in Metro Vancouver in 2026.

Much of the city’s design work serves the sectors that define the region: tourism and hospitality, arts and culture, real estate, food and drink, and tech. Many studios sit in the older industrial streets east of downtown, around Strathcona, Railtown and Mount Pleasant. When RGD brought its DesignThinkers studio tours to Vancouver on 25 May 2026, three of the studios on this list (Giant Ant, Carter Hales Design Lab and Roodenburg Design Consultants) opened their doors to visitors.

Pure brand-strategy consultancies, advertising agencies and digital product shops have their own pages, so this list concentrates on multidisciplinary design studios. It runs in no fixed order of merit, since the right studio depends on the brief, the budget and how you like to work.

The best design agencies in Vancouver

1. Giant Ant

Independent, part of the In Residence network · Strathcona · giantant.ca

Giant Ant describes itself as a creative studio, design shop and animation house, and it works across commercials, brand films and product animation. The studio is on East Hastings Street and belongs to In Residence, a network of independent creative specialists. The studio has also produced a feature film, Tangles, separately from its commercial work.

Recent work includes OpenTable’s 2026 brand campaign “Find a Restaurant”, Duolingo’s “Misunderstood” spots, a cel-animated segment for a HoYoverse Genshin Impact trailer, Microsoft Copilot product visuals and a second year of Super Bowl spots for Tennessee Valley Federal Credit Union. It suits brands that want a single studio for design and animation.

2. Carter Hales Design Lab

Founder-led · East Vancouver · carterhales.com

Sean Carter founded Carter Hales Design Lab in 2011, and it now calls itself a fully integrated Vancouver studio working across branding, design, digital, data and marketing strategy. It was one of the studios on RGD’s 2026 Vancouver tours.

The client list leans civic and cultural. Vancouver International Airport is a long-running partner (including its annual report), and the studio has worked on a TELUS packaging design system, the BC Place concessions rebrand, viaSport British Columbia, the Invictus Games 2025, Bard on the Beach and the Wickaninnish Inn.

3. Burnkit

Studio, active since 2000 · Strathcona · burnkit.com

Burnkit works from Powell Street and covers naming, identity, graphic design, art direction, environmental design, campaigns, brand books and websites. Its site dates the studio’s work back to 2000.

Clients include Herschel Supply Co., Electronic Arts (EA Create), San Francisco Ballet, Ballet BC, the Vancouver Art Gallery’s fundraising campaign and BC Parks Foundation. The mix of arts organisations and consumer brands makes it a good fit for clients who want identity and environmental work from the same team.

4. Post Projects

Founder-led · Mount Pleasant · postprojects.com

Alex Nelson and Beau House started Post Projects in 2010. The studio on Ontario Street describes itself as a communication design agency, with strong typography and editorial work alongside identity, packaging, photography and web design and development. Its work has been featured in It’s Nice That and Applied Arts.

Clients include the Contemporary Art Gallery Vancouver, Remai Modern, Western Front, Arts Umbrella, the University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University, Umbra and Brassneck Brewery. Recent sites include work for the Gibson Museum.

5. Toolbox Design

Independent · Yaletown · toolboxdesign.com

Toolbox is an independent design and strategy agency in Yaletown, working on brand identity, storytelling and packaging. Its sectors are hotels and resorts, real estate communities, retail, food and beverage and packaged goods.

Projects include Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge, Basin Glacial Waters for Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise, a series rebrand for Whistler Brewing Co., POJU pomegranate juice packaging and the exhibition identity for Wolves: The Art of Dempsey Bob at the Audain Art Museum in Whistler.

6. AldrichPears Associates

Vancouver and Dartmouth offices · East Vancouver · aldrichpears.com

AldrichPears plans and designs museum exhibits and visitor centres. It covers interpretive planning, content development, graphic, exhibit and interaction design, and production management, and it has completed more than 800 projects in over 20 countries across four decades. The main studio is on Pandora Street, with a second office in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.

Recent projects include A Soldier for All Seasons at the Chinese Canadian Museum, This is Native Land at the Washington State History Museum, the Valley of Fire Visitor Center in Nevada and interpretive work for Gros Morne National Park.

7. Roodenburg Design Consultants

Founder-led · Strathcona · roodenburgdesign.com

Roodenburg Design Consultants (RDC) began in 2000 as an interior design and architectural practice and has grown into a multidisciplinary studio covering branded interiors, placemaking, environmental design for retail, exhibitions and events, and graphic design. It works from the Assembly building at Glen Drive and East Georgia Street, and was on RGD’s 2026 Vancouver tours.

The studio pairs design with community-led research and consultation for civic and business clients. Named work includes the Mark Loria Gallery in Victoria, fundraising material for the GDC Foundation and identity work for Karen Jamieson Dance.

8. Hangar 18 Design Continuum

Founded 1996 · Burnaby · h18.com

Hangar 18 is a small design and advertising studio founded in 1996, with a strong copywriting bent. It works on visual identity, packaging, print, advertising and web design, and its current address is on Dundas Street in Burnaby.

It suits smaller organisations that want design and copy from one compact team. The studio also publishes its own short articles on design practice under the name V-Files.

9. Tardigrada Design Studio

Founder-led · Burnaby · tardigradastudio.com

Maria Sinisterra and Shan Selvaraj founded Tardigrada in 2021 to combine brand design and interior design in one studio. The founders draw on North American, Latin American and South Asian design influences, and the services run from visual identity and websites to motion graphics and interiors.

Clients are mostly in hospitality, retail and wellness: Indish (concept, art direction and interiors), June on Cambie, Odette by Kelly Deck, and work for the Vancouver Art Gallery, Doctors of BC and Canada’s National Observer. It is a good fit for a restaurant or shop that wants the room and the brand designed together.

What to look for in a Vancouver design agency

Match the studio’s core discipline to the brief. Vancouver’s design studios tend to specialise more than their size suggests: a motion studio, an exhibit designer and a packaging studio will approach the same problem in very different ways. Look at finished work in your format (a package on a shelf, an exhibit installed, a spot on air) rather than case-study boards alone.

Ask who will do the work. Most studios here run with small senior teams, which is a strength, but it also means one or two people carry each project. Find out who leads yours, and how the studio handles production partners for print, fabrication, signage or animation.

Check how the studio handles physical production. Environmental, exhibit and packaging work depends on fabricators, printers and installers, and a lot of Vancouver work ends up outside the city, in Whistler, the Rockies, Vancouver Island or abroad. A studio that has managed production at a distance will save time on site.

Finally, look at how files and feedback move. Design projects produce many rounds of PDFs, renders, animatics and layout files, and comments scattered across email lead to the wrong version going to print. Agree at the start where the latest files live, how clients leave feedback, and how the studio confirms that each comment has been dealt with.

How Fabric helps design agency teams

Fabric gives a design studio one workspace for its files, client feedback and project knowledge, with AI search across all of it. The setup for agencies works around one space per client, with briefs, references, working files and call notes kept together, and there is a dedicated page on Fabric for designers.

Working files live in Fabric’s cloud drive, which streams files on demand so large layouts, renders and video take no local disk space. Search works by meaning across documents, images, PDFs and transcribed recordings, and colour search finds visual assets by shade. Similar search finds related images by composition, colour and subject, which helps when a designer is hunting for an earlier concept or a reference. For early concepts and moodboards, Canvas is an infinite whiteboard that can embed Figma files and video.

Client review runs through sharing. Share a file or folder with the client as a commenter and they can respond without creating an account. With annotations, clients highlight and comment on PDFs, draw on images and attach a comment to the drawing, and leave timestamped comments on video and audio, including drawings on a video frame. Motion studios can review animatics this way, and the team marks each comment completed so feedback works like a checklist. When a piece is signed off, any file or folder can be published as a web page for view-only delivery, with password protection if needed.

On Team plans, self-writing docs can maintain a page for each client from meetings, Slack and the workspace, covering decisions, deliverables and open items. That helps on long exhibit or packaging programmes where the history matters.

Password protection is included on Pro and Team plans, and self-writing docs on Team plans. See plans for teams.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best design agency in Vancouver?

It depends on the discipline. For motion and animation, Giant Ant has recent campaigns for OpenTable, Duolingo and Microsoft. For museum and visitor-centre exhibits, AldrichPears has four decades of projects. For hospitality packaging, Toolbox has worked with Fairmont and Whistler Brewing, and Post Projects is a strong choice for cultural identity and editorial work.

Which Vancouver design studios work on packaging?

Toolbox, Burnkit, Hangar 18 and Carter Hales all list packaging work. Carter Hales built a packaging design system for TELUS, and Toolbox has designed packaging for POJU and Whistler Brewing Co.

Are there Vancouver studios that design exhibits and environments?

Yes. AldrichPears designs museum exhibits and visitor centres in Canada and abroad, Roodenburg Design Consultants works on branded interiors, placemaking and exhibitions, Burnkit lists environmental design, and Tardigrada combines brand and interior design for hospitality clients.

How is a design agency different from a branding agency?

Branding agencies concentrate on strategy, naming and identity. Design studios take on a wider range of made things, such as packaging, exhibits, signage, publications and animation, though many do both. For strategy-led identity specialists, see the best branding agencies in Vancouver.

How should a design studio collect client feedback?

Keep one current version of each file in a shared location, and ask clients to comment on the file itself rather than over email. A studio can share a folder with the client as a commenter, take comments on PDFs, images and video, and mark each comment completed once it has been dealt with.

Related lists

Design agencies in other cities: New York · London · Los Angeles · Chicago · Toronto

More in Vancouver: Creative agencies · Branding agencies · UX design agencies · Advertising agencies · Animation

Run your studio on Fabric: Fabric for designers · Fabric for creative teams · Fabric for motion design agencies