Best Design Agencies in Manchester (2026)

Introduction

Manchester has one of the strongest design scenes in the UK outside London, and the 10 agencies below cover graphic, packaging, digital, environmental and wayfinding work for clients from local cultural venues to global drinks brands. Each was chosen for recent work, the range of disciplines it covers and the quality of its client list.

Most of the city’s design studios sit within walking distance of each other in the Northern Quarter and Ancoats, with a smaller group around Castlefield. One building, 22 Lever Street, houses three of the studios on this list. The scene has its own festival, Design Manchester, which Instruct Studio co-founded and still produces. Recent news includes Persona.Studio’s B Corp certification in May 2026, joining LOVE., and Music’s new identity for Chester Zoo, drawn with illustrator Adam Hayes.

Every agency here has an active studio in Greater Manchester in 2026. The list is unranked, since the right studio depends on your brief, sector and budget. Studios that work mainly on brand strategy and identity are covered on the branding agencies page, and the list below leans towards studios that design across several media.

The best design agencies in Manchester

1. LOVE.

Independent, certified B Corp · Northern Quarter · lovecreative.com

LOVE. is one of Manchester’s largest independent design agencies, with around 60 people in its Dale Street studio and a second office in New York. It works across brand strategy, identity, packaging, spaces, immersive experiences and activations, and describes itself as a certified B Corporation.

Its recent work is heavy on drinks and food. Featured projects include a reset for Glenmorangie, a brand reset for Häagen-Dazs, the Back to Nature rebrand, the LARK whisky identity, a Hippeas brand world, spaces for James B. Beam Distilling Co. and “Dive into Penfolds”. It has also published work for BrewDog Distilling Co. under new ownership. Clients wanting physical brand spaces as well as packaging will find both under one roof.

2. Music

Independent · Castlefield · music.agency

Music is a Manchester design and brand agency that sums up its focus as “We design British culture”. It works for clients in food, fashion, sport, the arts and music, and runs a second studio in Shoreditch, London, which it opened after winning Dr. Martens.

Recent work includes a new identity for Chester Zoo built around a hand-drawn typeface and logotype made with illustrator Adam Hayes. Clients shown on its site include Fulham FC, Manchester City, The BRIT Awards, London Fashion Week and The Glasshouse, and it has long relationships with Universal Music and the British Fashion Council.

3. BGN

Independent · Ancoats · bgn.agency

BGN is a multidisciplinary branding, packaging and digital agency based at One Express in Ancoats. Its work is split into three practices: creative strategy, brand-led design (identity, motion, packaging and campaigns) and digital experiences, with in-house web development on WordPress and Craft CMS. It is a BIMA member and appears on The Drum Recommended.

Recent projects include Thirst for Carlsberg Britvic, a digital presence for the yogurt brand Onken, work for Rolls-Royce on aviation finance, the shopping destination Victoria Leeds and the legal tech company Summize. Other clients named on its site include Gillette, Mark Hill and Slumberdown. It suits clients who want packaging and a website from the same team.

4. Buckley Creative

Independent · Ancoats · buckleycreative.co.uk

Buckley Creative is an independent studio in Ancoats with more than 15 years of work in brand design, graphic design, illustration, motion graphics and large-scale environmental artwork. It was named in Insider’s North West Most Exciting Companies in 2026.

Its best-known recent project is a set of 33 bespoke art pieces across two floors of Amazon’s Manchester city centre headquarters. It has also made immersive motion graphics for Meta Festival at Outernet London, an animated film for Manchester Pride and illustrated fundraising material for The Felix Project. Clients also include the BBC and Action for Children.

5. Instruct Studio

Independent · Northern Quarter · instruct.studio

Instruct Studio is a multidisciplinary design studio at 22 Lever Street working in print, digital and brand direction, mainly for the architectural, media and cultural sectors. It co-founded the Design Manchester festival and continues to produce it.

Past clients have included adidas, the BBC and Manchester Art Gallery. The studio is small, which suits cultural organisations and property developers that want senior designers on the work from start to finish.

6. Persona.Studio

Independent, certified B Corp · Northern Quarter · persona.studio

Persona.Studio is a brand and digital design studio of designers and technologists with more than 15 years of experience. Its range runs from brand strategy and campaigns to branded signage, wayfinding and place branding, which makes it one of the more environmental studios on this list. It announced its B Corp certification in May 2026.

The studio has had a busy 2026, adding BlakeGriggs in the US in February, BTP Architects in March and Matillion in July. Earlier work includes Commonwealth Games merchandise and projects for Tattu Restaurants, YKK, National Trust, Aston Villa FC and NetEase Games.

7. Modern Designers

Independent · Northern Quarter · moderndesigners.co.uk

Modern Designers has been working from Manchester since 2004 and describes its output as “intelligently designed brands for creatively ambitious clients”. Its work spans identity, signage and editorial design, and it shares 22 Lever Street with Instruct and Persona.

Projects on its site include a modern identity for the BBC Philharmonic, “Use Hearing Protection” for the Science and Industry Museum on the early years of Factory Records, and work for MediaCity. It has done a run of placemaking projects with developers, including Kampus for HBD and Capital & Centric, Island and Setl for HBD, and signage for Umbro’s NQ Collection.

8. The Chase

Independent · Castlefield · thechase.co.uk

The Chase is one of Manchester’s longest-running design consultancies. Ben Casey set it up in the city in 1986, and it now works from Commercial Street in Manchester and from Soho in London, offering design, branding and advertising to clients in most sectors.

Its work has covered branding, digital, exhibitions and environments, packaging and print, for clients including Royal Mail, the BBC and D&AD. It is a sensible choice for organisations that want one consultancy to handle both design and campaign work.

9. Creative Spark

Independent · Northern Quarter · creativespark.co.uk

Creative Spark is a creative brand agency on Swan Street with more than two decades of work behind it. It organises its offer into brand, marketing, web and video/3D, so a single team can take a client from identity to website to launch film.

Recent brand work includes a rebrand for Catapult, identities for the padel clubs Ollo and Pure Padel, the coffee brand Oxpot and the wellbeing space Gymbound. On the web side it built a Super Fan Hub for Sony Music, and its marketing clients include GBG Loqate and British Gypsum.

10. Noramble

Independent · Ancoats · noramble.co.uk

Noramble is a brand and packaging design studio on Jersey Street in Ancoats, focused on challenger consumer brands that want to stand out on shelf. It covers brand strategy, identity and packaging, and says its projects typically take six to eight weeks.

Recent work includes packaging for 10X Athletic protein bars, brand and packaging design for Yeubo, Curdi, Nod Skincare and Flavadent, and a rebrand for the juice brand Sxollie. Its clients are mostly founder-led food, drink and personal care businesses.

What to look for in a Manchester design agency

Start with the mix of disciplines you need. Some studios here are strongest on packaging and shelf impact, others on signage, wayfinding and placemaking, and a few can design and build a website alongside the identity. A clear brief about which outputs matter most will narrow the field quickly.

Look at the sectors each studio knows well. Manchester’s design scene has deep ties to regeneration and property, with developers commissioning identities and signage for new neighbourhoods, and to culture, music and football. Drinks, food and personal care brands make up much of the packaging work. A studio that has already designed for your category will spend less time learning it.

Ask about team size and who will lead the project. Many of the best studios in the city have between five and 60 people, so the founder or creative director often stays close to the work. Some also run London studios, which is worth knowing if you expect meetings in both cities.

Finally, ask how files, feedback and sign-off are handled. Packaging artwork, signage drawings and identity systems go through many rounds with clients, printers and fabricators. Studios that keep one current version of each file and a single record of approvals tend to avoid costly print errors.

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 agency setup suits studios running several clients at once, with a space per client for briefs, artwork, references and call notes. There are dedicated pages for packaging design and graphic design teams.

Large design files sit in Fabric’s cloud drive, which streams files on demand so they take no local disk space, and shared team folders always hold the latest version. Search works by meaning across documents, images and PDFs, and colour search finds visual assets by shade. Similar search surfaces related images by composition, colour and subject, which helps when pulling references from past projects.

Early-stage work fits well on Canvas, an infinite whiteboard for moodboards that embeds Figma files and exports to SVG or PNG. For review, clients can leave threaded comments through a shared link without signing up, and annotations let reviewers highlight and comment on PDFs such as artwork proofs and guidelines. Reviewers can also draw on any image and add a comment to the drawing.

Finished work can be published as a web page with password protection, and link analytics shows when each named recipient opened a presentation. There is more on this in how to share design files with a client.

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 Manchester?

It depends on the work. LOVE. and Music have the largest national client lists, Noramble and BGN are strong on packaging, and Persona.Studio and Modern Designers do a lot of signage and placemaking work.

Which Manchester design agencies specialise in packaging?

Noramble focuses on brand and packaging for challenger consumer brands, and BGN, LOVE. and The Chase all include packaging in their services. LOVE. works mainly for large drinks and food brands.

Which agencies in Manchester design signage and wayfinding?

Persona.Studio lists signage, wayfinding and place branding among its services, and Modern Designers has designed signage for several Manchester developments. Buckley Creative produces large-scale artwork and environmental graphics for offices.

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

Design agencies on this list produce the full range of outputs, from packaging and print to signage and websites. Branding agencies focus on strategy, positioning and identity systems. For identity-led studios, see the best branding agencies in Manchester.

Where are Manchester’s design studios based?

Most are in the Northern Quarter and Ancoats, with a few around Castlefield. 22 Lever Street in the Northern Quarter is home to Instruct Studio, Persona.Studio and Modern Designers.

Related lists

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

More in Manchester: Creative agencies · Branding agencies · UX design agencies · Marketing agencies · Photography studios · Animation

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