New York design firms

Branding agencies
in New York

New York's craft-led branding studios — from identity systems to packaging — and the kind of brand each one suits.

See the ten Compare the facts
The scene

New York's branding scene runs deepest at the studio end: founder-led shops with a strong point of view, built around identity craft rather than scale. This list favors those — the studios where the work carries a distinct voice and senior people stay on it, across identity, packaging, motion, and strategy. It leads with craft and character rather than the size of the client roster.

Compare

The studios side by side, on the facts

Founding, New York base, and focus laid out plainly — never a score.

StudioFoundedNY baseDisciplines

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

The studios

The ten, in full

Each profile leads with what the studio is genuinely built for — start from the job, not the portfolio gloss.

Profile 01

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 02

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 03

&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 04

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 05

Sylvain

A strategy and design consultancy at the commerce-and-culture intersection.

Visit sylvain.co

The rundown

Sylvain helps influential organizations navigate cultural shifts and launch brand-defining initiatives, pairing brand strategy with design and innovation. It leans on cultural insight to move brands forward rather than simply restyle them, which puts strategy at the front of the engagement.

Known for

Brand and innovation work for Google, GM, Bloomberg, Target, Microsoft, 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

Location
176 Grand St, Manhattan
Also in
LA · Richmond · Amsterdam
Website
sylvain.co
Brand strategyDesignInnovation
Profile 06

Base Design

A typographic identity studio with a genuine New York practice.

Visit basedesign.com

The rundown

Base runs as an international network of studios that collaborate 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 a typographic, editorial sensibility.

Details

Location
13 S William St, Financial District
Network
International studios
Brand strategyIdentityPackagingEditorial
Profile 07

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 08

High Tide

A boutique studio with senior craft and 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 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 09

Clay Global

A studio that treats brand and product as one problem.

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, handling identity, product strategy, and front-end build in one place. That makes it the rare branding studio where a brand system and the product it lives in come from the same team.

Known for

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

Where they fit

Tech and product companies that want an identity built alongside the software it will live in.

Details

Location
148 Lafayette St, SoHo, Manhattan
Also
Remote-first · San Francisco HQ
Brand identityUI/UXWebDesign systems
Profile 10

DD.NYC

A full-service Manhattan studio covering brand, web, and packaging.

Visit dd.nyc

The rundown

DD.NYC covers branding, web design, packaging, and video from a single team, working across a broad mix of industries from real estate and healthcare to lifestyle. It positions itself as an all-in-one option for companies that want brand and its applications 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 studio to cover brand, web, and packaging rather than assembling separate specialists.

Details

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

Branding, answered

The craft-led, studio end of the New York market: founder-driven shops built around identity, packaging, motion, and strategy, where senior people stay on the work and the output carries a distinct voice. It's less focused on the large corporate brand consultancies, which suit mergers and boardroom-scale rebrands and are covered better elsewhere.

It ranges widely by studio size and scope. A boutique identity project commonly starts in the mid five figures; a comprehensive brand system with strategy, naming, and rollout from a top studio runs well into six figures. None publish rates, so approach two or three in parallel to calibrate against your actual scope.

A focused identity project is often six to twelve weeks. A full brand system with strategy, naming, and applications typically runs three to six months. Timelines stretch when internal approval involves many stakeholders, which is more often the cause of delay than the creative work itself.

By the problem first. A launch brand wants a studio built for launches (Red Antler); a media brand that lives on screen wants motion capability (Gretel); a systematic identity wants typographic rigor (Order); a brand tied to a product wants a studio that does both (Clay). Style matters, but fit to the actual job matters more.

A short brief covering the business problem, the audience, what already exists, who internally approves, and a budget range. Studios can tell you quickly whether they're the right fit when they have that, which saves everyone the long back-and-forth.

Several here do. High Tide and DD.NYC cover packaging and web alongside identity; Clay covers web and product; Gretel and &Walsh carry motion in house. If you want brand and its applications from one team rather than coordinating specialists, filter for the full-service studios rather than the pure identity shops.