Best Design Agencies in Montreal (2026)

Introduction

Montreal has one of the strongest design scenes in North America, and the nine studios below cover most of its range: graphic and editorial design, spatial and exhibition work, interactive installations and large-scale immersive shows. They were chosen for recent work, 2025 and 2026 recognition, and the quality of their client lists.

The city marked 20 years as a UNESCO City of Design in 2026 with the first Montréal Design Week, held from 28 April to 7 May across about 60 venues. Many of the studios here are clustered within a few blocks of each other in Mile End and Mile-Ex, and several work as much for festivals, museums and performing arts companies as for brands. Most deliver in French and English, and Quebec’s tougher rules on French in commercial signage and advertising, in force since June 2025, shape how campaigns and wayfinding are designed.

Every studio listed has an active Montreal studio in 2026. The list is unranked, since the right fit depends on the brief, the medium and how you like to work.

The best design agencies in Montreal

1. Moment Factory

Independent · Mile-Ex · momentfactory.com

Moment Factory is a multimedia and entertainment studio that has spent 25 years building collective experiences at the meeting point of design and technology. It marked its 25th anniversary in September 2026 and runs offices in New York, Paris, Tokyo, Singapore, Abu Dhabi and Riyadh, with Montreal as its base on avenue du Parc.

Recent work includes Phish’s 2026 residency at Sphere, the Wonders of Our World: Ocean experience at the National Geographic Museum of Exploration in Washington, and a collaboration with Google DeepMind announced in July 2026. It has also designed for Billie Eilish’s Hit Me Hard and Soft tour and The Messi Experience, and it runs its own ticketed attractions such as the AURA shows in heritage sites.

2. Daily tous les jours

Independent · Mile End · dailytouslesjours.com

Daily tous les jours is an art and design studio that has made interactive, participatory work for public spaces since 2010. It celebrated 15 years in March 2026 and showed new work, “Esquisse”, an interaction design and music project, at the first Montréal Design Week.

Its pieces travel widely: Duetti went to DIG Shibuya in Tokyo in February 2026, Spaghetti Chorus returned to the National Gallery of Canada in December 2025, and the studio exhibited at the 2025 Porto Design Biennale. It has also built Musical Swings for the North Carolina Museum of Art and River Lines for the Gaslight District in Cambridge. The studio’s book, Strangers Need Strange Moments Together, launched as a podcast in 2026.

3. Normal Studio

Independent · Mile End · normal.studio

Normal Studio is a multidisciplinary studio working across set design, visual design, technology and production, with a team of more than 30. It has been in business since 2009 and takes on public installations, entertainment and performing arts projects.

Its best-known work in the city is Cité Mémoire, the projection trail across Old Montreal, and it designed Planète Énergie at La Cité de l’énergie in Shawinigan. Stage work includes Cirque du Soleil’s Sép7imo Día, productions of La Traviata and Les 3 Mousquetaires, and the Six Invitational esports event.

4. Baillat Studio

Independent · Plateau-Mont-Royal · baillatstudio.com

Baillat Studio describes itself as a multiplatform design and production studio, and its portfolio is split between brand identity, advertising production, multimedia experiences and CGI and motion. It has been working since 2015 from rue Rachel Est on the Plateau.

Clients include Moment Factory, Cirque du Soleil, MUTEK, C2 Montréal, the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (for its Printemps du MAC identity), Red Bull and Age of Union. It also produces for agencies such as Cossette, Anomaly and Publicis New York, which makes it a useful partner where a campaign needs motion or installation work as well as print.

5. Dpt.

Independent · Mile End · dpt.co

Dpt. builds interactive spaces and digital experiences for brands and cultural institutions, mixing installation, augmented and virtual reality, and AI. It has been working for about 15 years and has a long awards record in immersive storytelling, including a Special Jury Prize at the 2024 Venice Film Festival for Oto’s Planet and an Ars Electronica Golden Nica for Manic VR.

Recent projects include Mandai Exploria, a museum installation, and a virtual character for the Montreal restaurant Joe Beef, both from 2026, along with an AI photobooth and the Echo AI suite for museums. It suits clients who want a physical space and a digital layer designed together.

6. Principal

Independent · Mile-Ex · principal.studio

Principal is a ten-person design studio working on identities, websites, campaigns, editorial and spatial projects. It was named Design Studio of the Year by the ADCC in 2022 and won the Grand Prix at the IDÉA awards in 2022, 2023 and 2024. In 2025 it took two Type Directors Club certificates and an ADCC Bronze in environmental design for “Pounding the Pavement” at the McCord Stewart Museum.

It designed the identity, campaign and website for Montréal Design Week 2026, and its client list runs from BIXI and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts to the Wexner Center for the Arts and The Gund at Kenyon College in the US. The three partners are Bryan-K. Lamonde, Bruno Cloutier and Mathieu Cournoyer.

7. Paprika

Independent · Mile End · paprika.com

Paprika is a graphic design firm with a long record in Montreal’s cultural sector. Its work covers branding, campaigns, posters, packaging, publishing, environments, video and web design, and it is led by president Joanne Lefebvre with Louis Gagnon as vice-president of creation.

Current and recent projects include the 2025 to 2026 season campaign for the National Arts Centre’s French Theatre, Théâtre aux Écuries’ 2025 to 2026 season, the Marathon des neiges 2026 campaign and the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal’s 2024 to 2025 annual report. It has also designed stamps for Canada Post and campaigns for Emily Carr University’s centenary and the National Theatre School of Canada.

8. Caserne

Independent · Mile-Ex · caserne.com

Caserne is a design studio that has been running for more than 14 years and has been named Canadian Design Studio of the Year three years in a row. It works across branding, campaigns, strategy, production and digital, and in 2021 it founded Forum, an annual graphic design event that has brought speakers such as Mirko Borsche and Elizabeth Goodspeed to Montreal.

Clients include Apple, Google (for an AI campaign at Coachella), The North Face, Cirque du Soleil, Moment Factory, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and the Canadian Council for Refugees. The studio was on the programme at OFFF Barcelona in 2026, and its Forum identity was shortlisted for typographic design at the 2025 ADCC Awards.

9. Locomotive

Independent · Villeray · locomotive.ca

Locomotive is a digital-first design studio that builds brand identities and digital experiences, taking projects from strategy through to deployment and maintenance. It has been running since 2008 and is known among developers for Locomotive Scroll, the open-source scrolling library it maintains.

Featured work includes projects for Scout Motors, Wolverine Worldwide, The Drake Hotel, Dulcedo and Lightship. It is a good fit when the website is the main expression of a brand and design and build need to sit with one team.

What to look for in a Montreal design agency

Start with the medium. Montreal’s studios split roughly into graphic and identity studios, spatial and exhibition designers, and multimedia studios that build installations and shows. Several cross over, but a studio that mostly makes posters and publications will approach a museum installation very differently from one that has built projection shows, so look for finished work in the medium you need.

Plan for two languages from the outset. Most Montreal studios work in French and English, and Quebec’s rules on French in commercial signage and advertising, tightened in June 2025, affect wayfinding, packaging and campaign layouts. Ask how the studio handles French and English versions, who writes and checks the French copy, and whether layouts are designed for French text lengths first. Your own legal team should confirm what applies to your project.

For installations and experiential work, ask about the whole lifecycle. Touring pieces, permanent installations and temporary festival work each need different budgets for fabrication, maintenance and technical support after launch. Studios that have toured work abroad, as several here have, can usually explain these costs in detail.

Finally, look at how the studio runs reviews. Design projects produce many rounds of PDFs, renders, motion tests and video walkthroughs, often with clients and partners in both languages. A clear process for where files live, how comments are gathered and how approvals are recorded saves time across a long project.

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 one space per client for briefs, references, working files and call notes. There is more on how designers use it on the Fabric for designers page.

Heavy files such as layered artwork, 3D renders and motion exports 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, PDFs and transcribed recordings, and colour search finds assets by shade. Similar search finds visually related work by composition, colour and subject, which helps when pulling references from past projects.

Early concept work can live on a canvas, an infinite whiteboard that embeds Figma, YouTube and Vimeo and exports to SVG or PNG. It works well for moodboards and installation storyboards shared with a client.

For feedback, share a file or folder with the client as a commenter; shared links work without sign-up. Commenters can highlight and comment on PDFs, draw on an image and attach a comment to the drawing, leave timestamped comments on video and audio, and draw on a video frame. The team marks each comment completed as it is handled, so a review round works like a checklist (annotations, review and approval). Final work can be published as a web page for view-only delivery, with password protection and link analytics showing when each named recipient opened 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 Montreal?

It depends on the brief. On recent recognition, Principal won the IDÉA Grand Prix three years running from 2022 to 2024, Caserne has been named Canadian Design Studio of the Year three years in a row, and Moment Factory leads the city’s large-scale immersive work.

Which Montreal studios specialise in immersive and experiential design?

Moment Factory, Daily tous les jours, Normal Studio and Dpt. all build installations and experiences. Moment Factory works at the largest scale (arenas, tours and ticketed attractions), Daily tous les jours focuses on participatory public art, Normal Studio on stage and public projections, and Dpt. on interactive and AI-driven museum and brand work.

How is a design agency different from a branding agency in Montreal?

The two overlap, but design studios usually take on a wider range of media, including posters, publications, exhibitions and installations. Studios that focus on brand strategy and identity systems are covered in the best branding agencies in Montreal.

Do Montreal design studios work in English?

Yes. All the studios listed work in French and English, and several have international clients in the US, Europe and Asia. Projects that will appear in Quebec need French versions that meet the province’s language rules.

When is Montréal Design Week?

The first edition ran from 28 April to 7 May 2026, organised by Archi-Design QC from a concept by Index-Design, with exhibitions, open studios and talks across about 60 venues.

Related lists

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

More in Montreal: Creative agencies · Branding agencies · UX design agencies · Advertising agencies · Animation · Content studios

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