Top 26 New York
design firms

Twenty-six studios from across the New York market, written up properly: what each one actually does, and the situation it suits.

See the 26 Read the guide
Best for

Start from what you need built

Filter the twenty-six by the kind of work that decides the brief. It narrows the field faster than the full ranking.

The 26

The 26, in full

The full ranking, profiled in depth. Clay leads on breadth of relevant work; the rest follow. Each profile carries the rundown, known for, where they fit, and the details.

Profile 01

Clay Global

Product-focused UI/UX, web, and branding studio.

Visit clay.global

The rundown

Clay began as a UX practice for mobile and enterprise software and grew into a full brand and web studio. It handles product strategy, identity, and front-end build in one place, working with everyone from early startups to Fortune 100 companies, and tends to treat brand and product as a single problem rather than two separate briefs.

Known for

Digital products and brand systems for Google, Amazon, Slack, Coinbase, Snapchat, Sony, Coca-Cola, and Stripe.

Where they fit

Teams that want product-grade UX and a brand system from the same partner.

Details

Location
148 Lafayette St, SoHo
Also
Remote-first · San Francisco HQ
UI/UXWebBrand identity
Profile 02

Pentagram

The multi-partner institution.

Visit pentagram.com

The rundown

Pentagram runs as a collective of partners who each lead their own team, so an engagement is really with a specific partner rather than a house style. Its Manhattan office is one of the most influential design rooms anywhere, and has been for decades.

Known for

Identity and design work for Microsoft, Citibank, MoMA, Saturday Night Live, The Public Theater, and the High Line.

Where they fit

Large or cultural clients who want partner-level authorship on a landmark project.

Details

Location
Manhattan
Also in
London · Austin · Berlin · Paris
Brand identityEditorialPackagingWayfinding
Profile 03

COLLINS

The most decorated brand studio in the city.

Visit wearecollins.com

The rundown

COLLINS reframes what a company is rather than restyling how it looks, building brand systems that behave like products across identity, motion, and experience. It works at a scale and level of ambition that usually pulls a studio into a holding company, and has stayed on its own.

Known for

Category-defining brand work for Figma, Spotify, Dropbox, Twitch, Mailchimp, and Target.

Where they fit

Established brands ready for an ambitious reinvention and able to match the investment.

Details

Location
New York & San Francisco
Focus
Brand systems
Brand strategyIdentityExperienceNamingMotion
Profile 04

Work & Co

Product specialists who ship the software, not just the comps.

Visit work.co

The rundown

Work & Co prototypes in code and ships production software, with senior people staying hands-on through delivery. Its UX sits at the scale where performance and reliability are design problems, and its output tends to be software millions of people use daily.

Known for

The MTA's live New York City subway map, plus digital products for Apple, Google, Nike, IKEA, and Mailchimp.

Where they fit

Organizations that need a production-grade product, not a design concept.

Details

Founded
2013
Location
Dumbo, Brooklyn
Website
work.co
Product designDevelopment
Profile 05

Huge

A Brooklyn-born product and platform firm built for scale.

Visit hugeinc.com

The rundown

Founded in Dumbo in 1999, Huge builds digital products for large organizations, blending design, technology, and increasingly AI across product, platform, and marketing. It brings the process and bench depth that multi-market programs demand.

Known for

Early web and product work for IKEA, JetBlue, CNN, and Target, plus the redesign of New York City's municipal website.

Where they fit

Large brands that need digital products designed, built, and run at scale.

Details

Founded
1999
Location
45 Main St, Dumbo, Brooklyn
Product designUXPlatformsEngineering
Profile 06

AREA 17

Independent digital agency spanning brand, experience, and technology.

Visit area17.com

The rundown

Founded in New York in 2003 and running a second studio in Paris, AREA 17 blends design, technology, and branding to build large-scale websites and digital products. It also created Twill, an open-source CMS toolkit for Laravel that now powers sites well beyond its own roster, which gives the studio unusual depth on the engineering side of digital work.

Known for

Digital platforms for cultural institutions including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of the American Revolution, and the International Energy Agency, plus a website replatform and AI-powered archive for Pentagram. Its Twill CMS is used by organizations including Nike and The New York Times.

Where they fit

Organizations that need a substantial, well-engineered website or digital product, not just a visual identity.

Details

Founded
2003
Location
New York and Paris
Website
area17.com
Digital productBrandExperienceTechnology
Profile 07

Chermayeff & Geismar & Haviv

The studio behind some of America's most enduring marks.

Visit cghnyc.com

The rundown

With a lineage running back to 1957, this studio produced logos that have outlasted most of the companies that commissioned them. It works on marks built on simplicity and abstraction, meant to last decades rather than be refreshed every few years.

Known for

NBC, Chase, Mobil, PBS, National Geographic, and the US Open.

Where they fit

Institutions and corporations that want a timeless mark rather than a trend-responsive system.

Details

Founded
1957
Location
Manhattan
Website
cghnyc.com
Brand identityTrademarksEnvironmental graphics
Profile 08

Red Antler

The studio that wrote the playbook for launching brands.

Visit redantler.com

The rundown

Red Antler built its reputation launching direct-to-consumer brands from zero, combining positioning, naming, identity, and go-to-market into one engagement. Few studios anywhere have shaped as many recognizable startup brands.

Known for

Launch branding for Casper, Allbirds, Brandless, Burrow, Keeps, and Prose.

Where they fit

Venture-backed startups that need positioning and identity built together, before there's a product to point at.

Details

Founded
2007
Location
Brooklyn
Brand strategyNamingIdentityPackagingLaunch
Profile 09

Base Design

A global network with a genuine Manhattan practice.

Visit basedesign.com

The rundown

Base runs as an international network of studios that collaborate on large projects while keeping local leadership, so the New York team leads North American work with the wider network behind it. Its sensibility is typographic and restrained, with a long history serving cultural institutions.

Known for

Brand work for Apple, The New York Times, MoMA, the New York Mets, and JFK Terminal 4, plus the 2024 rebrand of the auction house Phillips.

Where they fit

Cultural institutions and brands that want senior local leadership with international reach on the same project.

Details

Location
13 S William St, Financial District
Network
International studios
Brand strategyIdentityPackagingEditorial
Profile 10

Sylvain

Strategy and design consultancy at the commerce-and-culture intersection.

Visit sylvain.co

The rundown

Sylvain is a New York strategy and design consultancy that helps influential organizations navigate cultural shifts and launch brand-defining initiatives. A Certified B Corporation founded in 2010, it pairs brand strategy with design and innovation, and leans on cultural insight to move brands forward rather than simply restyle them.

Known for

Brand and innovation work for clients including Google, GM, Waze, Bloomberg, Target, Microsoft, Marriott, Diageo, and American Express, plus recent cultural work for the WNBA.

Where they fit

Established organizations that want culturally sharp strategy tied to design, not design alone.

Details

Founded
2010
Location
176 Grand St · +LA, Richmond, Amsterdam
Website
sylvain.co
Brand strategyDesignInnovation
Profile 11

Code and Theory

Media and enterprise web at scale, half creative and half engineer.

Visit codeandtheory.com

The rundown

Structured with roughly half creatives and half engineers, Code and Theory takes on large digital-transformation and publishing builds rather than brochure sites. The balance shows in the work: complex, high-volume web estates for enterprise and media clients.

Known for

Digital transformation and platform work for Fortune 500 companies and major media organizations.

Where they fit

Enterprises and publishers with a large, complicated web estate to rebuild.

Details

Location
New York
Structure
~50% engineers
WebDigital platformsPublishing systems
Profile 12

ustwo

Two decades of high-craft product design, with real engineering behind it.

Visit ustwo.com

The rundown

ustwo pairs human-centered design with genuine engineering depth and is as comfortable with medical and enterprise platforms as with consumer apps. It builds its own products too, including Monument Valley, which shows in the craft of the client work.

Known for

Monument Valley, plus product work for Google, Peloton, Samsung, HSBC, and Google DeepMind.

Where they fit

Ambitious products that need design and technical rigor in equal measure.

Details

Location
20 Jay St, Brooklyn
HQ
London
Website
ustwo.com
Product designUXEngineering
Profile 13

Gretel

Image-driven identity with motion built in.

Visit gretelny.com

The rundown

Founded by Greg Hahn, who came up through MTV, VH1, and Trollbäck, Gretel makes bold identity work across screen and print, with motion, typography, and 3D held in house. A brand carries from strategy through campaign without being handed to a separate production partner.

Known for

Identity work for Netflix, Nike, MoMA, Vice, MasterClass, and Knoll.

Where they fit

Media and consumer brands that need a visual system with real motion capability behind it.

Details

Founded
2005
Location
Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn
Brand identityMotionTypographyEditorial
Profile 14

&Walsh

Bold, art-forward identity from one of the most recognizable names in the field.

Visit andwalsh.com

The rundown

Jessica Walsh founded the studio in 2019 after nearly a decade at Sagmeister & Walsh, making concept-driven identities with a high visual point of view. Strategy, motion, packaging, and photography all run in house, and the output is deliberately more experimental than most studios its size.

Known for

Identity for biodesign company Geltor, the LGBTQIA+ app Lex, and vertical-farming company Plenty, plus branding for Google I/O and TED Countdown.

Where they fit

Brands that want a distinctive identity with a real point of view and are comfortable with creative risk.

Details

Founded
2019
Location
Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Brand strategyArt directionMotionPackaging
Profile 15

Trollbäck+Company

A motion-native branding studio that helped define how brands move on screen.

Visit trollback.com

The rundown

Founded by Swedish designer Jakob Trollbäck in 1999, the studio built its name pairing brand strategy with motion, becoming a go-to partner for television networks and culture-driven brands. Its identities are designed to live across broadcast, film, and digital as much as in print.

Known for

The communication system for the UN's 17 Sustainable Development Goals, TED conference title sequences, and network branding for AMC, TNT, and ESPN.

Where they fit

Brands whose identity needs to move, across video, broadcast, and screen.

Details

Founded
1999
Location
88 Pine St, Financial District
BrandingMotionBroadcastExperiential
Profile 16

Fantasy

Large-scale product design with a bold, AI-forward streak.

Visit fantasy.co

The rundown

Fantasy has spent more than 25 years on large-scale digital products, from mobile operating systems to AI experiences, and the work leans bold and emotion-driven. It stays senior-led, which suits high-visibility products that need real visual impact alongside the UX.

Known for

Product work for Google, Netflix, X, Spotify, Samsung, and 23andMe.

Where they fit

Teams building AI products or high-visibility experiences that need standout design.

Details

Location
San Francisco and New York
Focus
AI experiences
Website
fantasy.co
Product designUXAI experiences
Profile 17

XXIX

Design and technology studio for founders and growth-stage teams.

Visit xxix.co

The rundown

XXIX (said "twenty-nine") is a small NYC-born studio, also in Berlin, that turns ideas into brands, products, and experiences across screen and print. It works comfortably across a wide range, from first-time founders to large tech companies and from typefaces and posters to code and data visualization, with a stated obsession over craft and quality.

Known for

Brand and product work for founders, growth-stage startups, large technology companies, and for-good organizations, including typeface design for global corporations and data-visualization work on social issues.

Where they fit

Founders and teams that want a versatile, craft-driven partner across design and technology.

Details

Location
NYC-born and headquartered
Also
Berlin
Website
xxix.co
DesignTechnologyBrandProduct
Profile 18

Big Human

A digital product studio for startups and brands.

Visit bighuman.com

The rundown

Big Human does product design, development, and branding across mobile apps, web apps, SaaS, and ecommerce from its Manhattan studio, working mostly with startups. It has incubated its own products over fifteen-plus years, which shows in how tightly it scopes a first build.

Known for

The team behind HQ Trivia and Vine, with client work for Whistle, Rockefeller Center, Gemini, and Netflix.

Where they fit

Founders who want a hands-on partner to take an app or product from idea to launch.

Details

Location
51 E 12th St, Manhattan
Focus
Startups
Product designApp developmentUI/UXBranding
Profile 19

Order

Precise, systems-driven identity with typographic rigor.

Visit order.design

The rundown

Founded by Jesse Reed and Hamish Smyth, Order works to the principle that everything is done for a reason and nothing for decoration. Its founders also run Standards Manual, the publisher behind the reissued NASA and NYC Transit graphics standards manuals, which tells you how seriously it takes systematic identity.

Known for

The Kickstarter rebrand, plus identity work for Herman Miller and the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy.

Where they fit

Companies that want rigorous, systematic identity work with genuine typographic depth.

Details

Location
Greenpoint, Brooklyn
Also in
Miami
Brand identityType designGuidelinesSignage
Profile 20

DD.NYC

Full-service Manhattan design agency.

Visit dd.nyc

The rundown

DD.NYC is an independent, award-winning creative agency covering branding, web design, packaging, and video from a single team. Certified as a minority- and women-owned business, it works across a broad mix of industries, from real estate and healthcare to lifestyle, and positions itself as an all-in-one option for companies that want design handled end to end.

Known for

Branding, web, and packaging programs for clients ranging from Fortune 500 companies to founder-led startups and nonprofits.

Where they fit

Businesses that want one agency to cover brand, web, and packaging rather than assembling separate specialists.

Details

Founded
2015
Location
Manhattan · M/WBE-certified
Website
dd.nyc
BrandingWebPackagingVideo
Profile 21

Athletics

Brand systems built as working websites and tools.

Visit athleticsnyc.com

The rundown

A cross-disciplinary Brooklyn studio working where design meets technology, Athletics integrates strategists, designers, and creative technologists. Its distinguishing move is treating a brand system as something usable, delivering sites and generative tools rather than a PDF of guidelines.

Known for

Cultural and commercial brand experiences delivered across digital and physical formats.

Where they fit

Organizations that want a brand system to arrive as a live website and toolkit.

Details

Founded
2004
Location
Brooklyn
Web designWeb developmentBrand identityUX
Profile 22

High Tide

Boutique NYC creative studio with a strategy-first approach.

Visit hightidenyc.com

The rundown

High Tide is a full-service creative studio known for detailed, multi-layered brand work across identity, packaging, environmental, and web. Its team comes out of top design and advertising firms and in-house roles in music, fashion, and art, and it favors a strategy-first process aimed at identities built to last.

Known for

A widely covered rebrand of the iconic NYC institution H&H Bagels, with reported work for consumer and lifestyle brands including Kith and Warby Parker.

Where they fit

Consumer, food, and lifestyle brands that want a boutique studio with senior craft and a strong identity focus.

Details

Founded
2008
Location
Brooklyn
Brand identityPackagingEnvironmentalWeb
Profile 23

Barrel

Ecommerce and Shopify Plus, built for consumer brands.

Visit barrelny.com

The rundown

Barrel has designed and built ecommerce since 2006 and worked on Shopify since 2009, so its sites are grounded in the realities of a live commerce platform rather than abstract comps. It's usefully opinionated, steering clients off headless builds unless a genuine technical need justifies the cost.

Known for

Ecommerce sites and replatforms for consumer and CPG brands, including migrations from Magento, WooCommerce, and Salesforce Commerce Cloud.

Where they fit

Consumer brands on or moving to Shopify Plus that want a site built for their actual platform.

Details

Founded
2006
Location
New York City
EcommerceShopify PlusWeb
Profile 24

Cake & Arrow

A research-led UX studio for insurance and financial services.

Visit cakeandarrow.com

The rundown

Founded in 2002 and formerly Alexander Interactive, Cake & Arrow works almost exclusively with insurance and financial services from its Fifth Avenue studio, which is the sharpest domain focus of any firm on this page. It is research-led and fluent in the regulatory and distribution complexity that defines the sector.

Known for

Product and experience work for Chubb, Travelers, Aflac, MetLife, Northwestern Mutual, and The Hanover.

Where they fit

Carriers, brokers, and financial-services firms whose products have to work for customers, agents, and internal teams at once.

Details

Founded
2002
Location
149 Fifth Ave, Manhattan
UXService designProduct strategyResearch
Profile 25

Utility

A design-led studio that builds and ships the app, not just designs it.

Visit utility.agency

The rundown

Built by creatives and technologists, Utility pairs product design with engineering to ship polished apps for both large brands and funded startups, with a stated obsession over interface detail. Design-led, but it ships to the store rather than handing over a spec.

Known for

Apps and products for Airbnb, the NBA, Samsung, Verizon, DirecTV, and Shake Shack.

Where they fit

Brands and startups that want a design-led partner to build and ship, not just specify.

Details

Location
New York
Platforms
iOS & Android
App designApp developmentUX/UIiOS & Android
Profile 26

Mission Control

Remote branding and design studio with a small, senior team.

Visit missioncontrol.co

The rundown

A compact senior team offering brand strategy, identity, and design for startups and growth-stage companies. It deliberately caps how many clients it takes on each season, so engagements get focused, senior-level attention rather than being handed down to junior staff.

Known for

A low public profile by design. The studio doesn't publish a named-client list, so its work is best assessed directly through its portfolio.

Where they fit

Founders who want senior attention and a tight, small-team engagement model.

Details

Location
Fully remote, asynchronous-first
Team
Small, senior
Brand strategyIdentityDesign
Compare

The firms side by side, on the facts

The firms laid out plainly — founding, New York base, and focus. Never a score.

FirmFoundedNY baseDisciplines

Facts only — founding, New York base, and disciplines. No rankings; the right studio depends on the brief.

The guide

The independent end of the market

Many of these studios are independent, and a good number are small by design. That structure changes the engagement in ways worth understanding before you brief one.

Seniority is structural, not promised. At a studio of fifteen people there is no junior bench to hand your project to. The person who pitched is the person working. Large firms can staff this well and frequently do not, and it is the most common complaint about agency work at scale.

Capacity is finite and seasonal. Small studios take a limited number of engagements at a time, and several here cap deliberately. The practical consequence is that availability, not price, is often the binding constraint. Ask when they could start before you fall in love with the work.

The founder's taste is the product. At this scale you are commissioning a point of view rather than a process that produces consistent output regardless of who runs it. That is the argument for hiring a boutique and also the risk. If you want work that does not look like their portfolio, you have chosen wrong.

Scope flexibility is real. Small independents can restructure an engagement mid-flight without a change control process. Useful when discovery reveals the brief was wrong, which it often does.

Multi-market rollout will strain them. Twelve markets, six languages, and a phased global launch need bench depth and project management infrastructure that small studios do not carry. That is what the holding-company firms are for, and this list is not where to find them.

What separates them

One category, many different businesses

The category label hides how differently these firms are built.

Engineering-backed digital

Platform-grade build

AREA 17 built and maintains Twill, an open-source CMS now used by organisations including Nike and The New York Times — a level of technical investment almost no design studio makes.

Design & technology

Type, print, code, data

XXIX moves between typeface design, print, code, and data visualisation, backed by the garden3d group. Unusual range for a studio of its size.

Full-service

Under one roof

DD.NYC covers brand, web, packaging, and video internally — for companies that would otherwise assemble three vendors and manage the seams themselves.

Strategy-led

Closer to a consultancy

Sylvain leads with cultural strategy and sits inside the kyu Collective, so it operates closer to a consultancy than a studio. Different process, price, and output.

Identity craft

Boutique detail

High Tide is a boutique working in identity, packaging, and environmental design, with the consumer and lifestyle track record that implies.

Product & brand

An uncommon pairing

Clay and Mission Control both work across product UX and brand — a genuinely uncommon combination rather than a claim most studios can support.

Specialisms

Disciplines you will not find everywhere

If your project involves any of these, filter on it first. It narrows the field faster than anything else, and getting it wrong is expensive.

Specialisms worth knowing about

Physical production has constraints digital work does not: substrates, print processes, dielines, regulatory copy, and lead times measured in months. Studios that do this regularly know the printers. Studios that do not will learn on your budget.

Signage, spatial graphics, and interior application involve fabricators, permits, and materials. A different discipline from screen work despite sharing a visual vocabulary.

Custom type is a specialist practice and a serious differentiator when a brand needs to own its voice at the letterform level. Very few studios of any size do it in house.

Building a content platform is not web design. It involves editorial workflows, permissions, migration, and long-term maintenance, and it needs a studio with genuine engineering capability rather than a front-end contractor.

Turning complex data into something legible is a research and information design problem before it is a visual one, and it is rarely done well by generalists.

How these are written

What each profile covers

Every profile follows the same structure so they compare directly.

The rundown

Describes what the firm actually is and where its centre of gravity sits — in our assessment rather than their marketing language.

Known for

Names clients and projects sourced to case studies, credible press, or the client's own materials. Where a firm publishes no roster, the profile says so plainly and tells you to judge the portfolio instead.

Where they fit

Describes the client situation the firm genuinely suits.

Details

Founding date, location, ownership, and disciplines up front. Sylvain inside the kyu Collective and XXIX within garden3d are noted rather than left implicit.

FAQ

Before you make contact

Boutique identity work commonly starts in the mid five figures. Full-service programmes covering brand, web, and packaging run higher, and strategy-led consultancy engagements higher still. None publish rates and all scale with scope.

Further than you expect. Small studios book out, and the ones in demand commonly have a lead time of one to three months before a project can start. Ask about availability on the first call.

For a single-market brand or a substantial website, no. For a multi-market rollout with simultaneous launches across regions, yes. Match the structure to the scale of the rollout rather than the size of your company.

For workshop-heavy strategy, packaging, and environmental work, in-person access is worth paying for. For most brand and digital work it is not, and one studio here is fully remote by design.

A written brief covering the business problem, the audience, what already exists, who internally approves, and a budget range. Small studios in particular will tell you quickly whether they are the right fit, which saves everyone time.

The order reflects breadth of relevant work rather than a score, so Clay leads and broad, deep studios rank high. It is not stars or percentages; the profiles carry the judgment.