Best Design Agencies in Dublin (2026)

Introduction

Dublin has a compact design scene, and the 9 agencies below are multidisciplinary studios whose work runs from identity and print to websites, signage and exhibitions. They were chosen for recent work, recognition in 2025 and 2026, and the range of what they make in-house.

Much of the city’s design work is for public and cultural bodies, so An Post stamps, museum identities and university websites turn up in many of these portfolios alongside property, finance and food brands. ICAD (the Institute of Creative Advertising and Design) is the main local yardstick: Detail took a Design Gold Bell at the 2025 awards, and CI Studio and Unthink were among the most frequently listed studios on the 2026 shortlist. Certification is also moving up the agenda, with Unthink announcing B Corp status in January 2026 and Dynamo also certified.

Every agency here has a Dublin studio in 2026, with three of them close together around Capel Street and Smithfield. The list runs in no fixed order of merit. Strategy and identity specialists are covered on the Dublin branding agencies page.

The best design agencies in Dublin

1. Detail. Design Studio

Design studio · Smithfield · detail.ie

Detail describes its work as strategy-led brand design, and its output covers identity, signage and wayfinding, typography, illustration, websites, print and stamps. It won a Gold Bell in Design, Digital at the 2025 ICAD Awards for the IADT Strategic Plan 2024-28 website, and its site also lists an ICAD Silver Bell for the accompanying book. A handbook for Lakeland Dairies made the ICAD 2026 shortlist, and the studio’s 20-year anniversary campaign, Detail XX, won a category award at the IDI Awards 2025.

Recent clients include An Post (a stamp marking the Dunlap Broadside, launched in February 2026), Ornua, Research Ireland, Dublin College and IMMA. Its environmental work includes the IADT Digital Media Building and an ongoing signage project for Salesforce in Madrid, which makes it worth a look for briefs that extend into physical spaces.

2. Unthink

B Corp · Mary’s Abbey, Dublin 7 · unthink.ie

Unthink is a branding and digital studio that announced B Corp certification in January 2026. Its website for Limerick School of Art & Design won a Webby Award in May 2026, and the studio had four entries on the ICAD 2026 shortlist, including that site, Dash Burger’s website and the photography for Open House Dublin 2025. LBB named it among the main Design winners at the 2025 ICAD Awards.

Clients include Dublin City University, Creative Futures Academy, FoodMarble, The Walls Project and Bar Pez. Its rebrand for OMOS was featured by The Brand Identity in August 2026. Identity and website work usually sit together here, so it suits organisations that want both from one team.

3. Zero-G

Partner-led · Capel Street · zero-g.ie

Zero-G is a brand and design studio founded by Ciarán ÓGaora and now led with partners JP O’Malley (strategy) and Jason Delahunty (creative). The team of designers, strategists and writers also covers motion in-house. Its directory listing on Sortlist gives 2003 as the founding year.

Recent projects include the identity for Ireland’s attendance at Expo 2025 in Osaka, work for the National Museum of Ireland, and the identity for Big Things Films, the production company founded by Cillian Murphy and Alan Moloney. The wider client list includes the Abbey Theatre, Hugh Lane Gallery, Fáilte Ireland, Bord na Móna and Trinity College Dublin.

4. Dynamo

B Corp · Duke Lane, Dublin 2 · dynamo.ie

Dynamo keeps brand, advertising and design under one roof, with writers, designers, animators and strategists on the same team. Founder Jamie Helly chairs the agency and Roísín Ní Ráighne is managing director. Adworld reported in October 2026 that it had won gold at the Transform Awards for its Clawtails packaging.

Named clients include Avant, Clawtails, Newstalk, Grant Thornton and Goffs. The in-house advertising team is useful if a new identity needs a campaign straight after launch, and the agency’s B Corp status may matter for clients with sustainability criteria in their procurement.

5. CI Studio

Founded 1996 · Herbert Lane, Dublin 2 · cistudio.ie

CI Studio has worked from Dublin since 1996, on brand strategy and brand creation across print, digital and environmental formats. It had six entries on the ICAD 2026 shortlist, more than most design studios: the Ceolta typeface, refreshes for CKS Finance and the National Concert Hall, its own CI 30 posters, and two An Post stamps.

Other clients include Chartered Accountants Ireland, Sisk and the architecture practice RKD. The studio also takes on signage and wayfinding, as it did at The Chase and at 20 Kildare Street, and hospitality identities such as Townhouse on the Green at 22.

6. New Graphic

Design studio · The Liberties · newgraphic.ie

New Graphic is a user-centred design studio on Vicar Street, with a site footer dating its work back to 2007. Its services run across identity, illustration, UI and UX, books, motion, packaging, websites, exhibition design, and signage and wayfinding. Strategy, digital and development roles are all in-house.

The client base leans towards culture and public service: Chester Beatty, the National Archives, the Royal Irish Academy, Heritage Ireland, the National Gallery of Ireland and Údarás na Gaeltachta, for which it did a rebrand and website. Web accessibility is a listed service, which is relevant for public bodies with legal duties in that area.

7. Begley Hutton

Design studio · Ballsbridge · begleyhutton.com

Begley Hutton describes itself as a multi-disciplinary design studio, working from Percy Lane in Ballsbridge. Its work covers brand identity, print, property marketing, websites, annual reports, wayfinding and placemaking.

It has an unusually strong commercial property and aviation finance roster, including IPUT, Lisney, Savills, Avolon and Genesis, plus Flour Mills, the project for Google’s offices at Bolands Mills. Other clients include SEAI, Bank of Ireland and Gymnastics Ireland. Its site lists no awards and few dates, so ask to see the most recent work.

8. Open

Founded 2014 · The Liberties · weareopen.ie

Open was founded in Dublin in 2014 by Gavan Duffy and Rhys Jenkins as a mix of designers, coders, illustrators and other creatives. It covers branding, bespoke websites, advertising, print and UX, and works from the Guinness Enterprise Centre on Taylors’ Lane, with a second office in Westport, Co. Mayo.

Recent homepage projects include An Post’s GPO Museum, the National Print Museum, the PÚCA Festival and An Túr Gloine for the National Gallery of Ireland. Ballymaloe Foods and Irish Thoroughbred Marketing are also clients. Given the two offices, it is reasonable to ask where your account team will sit.

9. Mesh Design

Independent · Donnybrook · meshdesign.ie

Mesh Design is an independent brand and packaging design agency that has worked in Dublin since 2000. It is the most focused studio on this list, and its work sits mainly on the supermarket shelf, where a brand identity has to hold up across a large range of products and pack formats.

Its site shows brands including Avonmore, Odlums, Brennans, O’Hanlons and Bundys, and Webtonic’s Dublin directory lists Danone, Valeo Foods, Green Isle Foods and Bord Bia among its clients. Food and drink companies with a range to redesign are the natural fit.

What to look for in a Dublin design agency

Start with the range you need made in-house. Some studios on this list employ their own developers and motion designers, and others may bring in specialists for parts of a job. Ask which parts of the job stay in the studio, particularly for websites and wayfinding, where production partners can have a large effect on the result.

Look closely at sector experience. A good deal of Dublin design work is for state bodies, universities and cultural institutions, and that work comes with public procurement, accessibility duties and often bilingual content in Irish and English. Studios such as New Graphic and Open know this territory well. Commercial property and finance work follows different rhythms, and Begley Hutton’s roster shows what that specialism looks like.

Use awards as one signal among several. The ICAD shortlists and the IDI Awards are public and easy to check, and they show which studios are entering and being noticed by their peers. Plenty of capable studios enter rarely, so a short awards list says little by itself. Ask for two or three recent projects and speak to the people who ran them.

Finally, ask how the studio runs a review round. Identity and print projects produce many versions of the same files, and feedback tends to arrive from several client departments at once. A studio with one place for the current version, and a clear record of who approved what, will spend less time reconciling comments before files go to print.

How Fabric helps design agency teams

Fabric gives a design studio one workspace for its files, client feedback and team knowledge, with AI search across all of it. Fabric for designers covers the individual setup, and the agency setup gives each client a space with briefs, assets, decks and call notes kept together.

Large artwork files sit in Fabric’s cloud drive, which streams files on demand so they take no local disk space. Shared team folders hold the latest versions, and the built-in viewer opens files without a full download. Search works by meaning across documents, images and PDFs, and colour search finds visual assets by shade. Similar search is useful for finding earlier work with a comparable composition or palette.

Feedback runs through sharing. Share a file or folder with a client as a commenter, and they can respond through the link without creating an account. They can highlight and comment on PDFs and text files, or draw on an image and attach a comment to the drawing. Motion work gets timestamped comments, and a video comment can include a drawing on the frame. The team then marks each comment completed, so a round of feedback works as a checklist. There is more on the workflow in design feedback.

For early-stage thinking, the canvas is an infinite whiteboard that embeds Figma files and exports to SVG or PNG, which suits moodboards and identity explorations. When work is ready to present, any file or folder can be published as a web page. Published links are view-only, with optional download, so they suit final guidelines and pitch documents better than review rounds.

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Frequently asked questions

What is the best design agency in Dublin?

There is no single answer, as the right studio depends on the brief. On recent recognition, Detail won a Design Gold Bell at ICAD 2025, Unthink won a Webby Award in 2026, and CI Studio had six entries on the ICAD 2026 shortlist.

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

The two overlap, and several studios do both. This list favours multidisciplinary studios that make identity, print, digital and environmental work. For firms that focus on brand strategy and naming, see the Dublin branding agencies list.

Which Dublin design agencies are B Corp certified?

On this list, Unthink (announced in January 2026) and Dynamo both show B Corp certification on their sites. The B Corp directory is the place to confirm any agency’s current status.

Which Dublin studios handle signage and wayfinding?

Detail, CI Studio, New Graphic and Begley Hutton all list signage or wayfinding work. Examples include the IADT Digital Media Building (Detail) and The Chase car park (CI Studio).

Do Dublin design agencies work for clients outside Ireland?

Yes. Detail has an ongoing signage project for Salesforce in Madrid, and Zero-G made the identity for Ireland’s presence at Expo 2025 in Osaka.

Related lists

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

More in Dublin: Creative agencies · Branding agencies · UX design agencies · Advertising agencies · Marketing agencies · Photography studios

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