One directory for hiring a design partner, sorted by service, industry and US city.
The top 50 of the 204 agencies we profile across web, brand, product and UI/UX design, ranked on the work they have actually shipped.
44 rankings by the service you need, the industry you work in and the US city you want your agency in.
Or filter all agencies at once →Small senior teams that ship a brand, a site and a first product fast, without a long discovery phase.
See the full ranking →For companies turning a working product into one system across brand, web and product.
See every agency that fits →Used to stakeholder rounds, design systems and rollouts across several products and markets.
See every agency that fits →Product-led sites and interfaces that explain complex software in a few screens.
See the full ranking →Trust-first brands and onboarding flows that pass compliance without feeling like a bank form.
See the full ranking →Wallets, protocols and exchanges that need to make unfamiliar products feel safe.
See the full ranking →Identity and brand experience built for products people choose every day.
See the full ranking →Naming, identity and the first website for a company that does not have a brand yet.
See the full ranking →Reworking a live product without breaking what existing users rely on.
See the full ranking →Marketing sites built for a launch, a funding round or a repositioning.
See the full ranking →Shared components and rules so several teams can ship one consistent product.
See the full ranking →Product and brand studios working with enterprise, consumer and media clients.
See the full ranking →Top agencies that work with US clients remotely across time zones.
See the overall ranking →Agencies from around the world, ranked across every category we cover: web, brand, product, UI/UX, app and more.
Clay Global runs brand, product and web in one team, so the identity and the interface come out of the same system. Its client list leans toward large tech and fintech companies that need design to hold up at scale.
The studio behind Slack’s earliest interface and Coinbase’s first consumer app. Metalab is the call when the product itself is the thing that has to get better.
A senior team built for founders that covers brand, product and website in one engagement, then stays on as ongoing design support.
Work & Co sells a dedicated team for a fixed window and gets to a working prototype tested with real users before visual design is signed off. The pace suits companies that can commit a decision-maker every week.
Every Pentagram project is led by one of its partners, so the person who pitches the identity is the person who draws it. The portfolio is a short history of modern graphic design.
COLLINS rebuilds brands at turning points, from Spotify and Twitch to Sweetgreen, with strategy, identity and brand experience handled together.
Instrument treats strategy and craft as one process, which shows in brand sites that carry real creative weight. Its campaign and motion side makes it a fit when the website is part of a larger launch.
Fantasy designs flagship products and AI interfaces for large companies, from Salesforce’s web platform to the AI cockpit in the Lincoln Nautilus.
Huge has treated user experience as a business problem since the late nineties and works at the scale of airlines, media groups and global retailers. Expect strategy and design delivered together, with the process large programs need.
ustwo scopes and builds with the same senior team, from discovery to a shipped product. Its work runs from design systems for financial platforms to Monument Valley, the game that made its name.
Wolff Olins works where brand strategy meets business strategy and has done so for six decades. It is the call when the whole company is changing direction and the brand has to explain why.
Koto designs identities that hold up in app icons, notifications and feeds as well as on a billboard. Fintech and consumer apps make up a large part of its portfolio.
Red Antler built its name on direct-to-consumer launches and still does its best work in the months before and after a brand first meets customers: naming, identity, packaging and the site that sells it.
Hello Monday builds interactive sites that feel human without losing technical ambition. The Scandinavian restraint keeps playful work from tipping into gimmick.
Formerly Handsome, Raw Materials relaunched as a design company built around creative product work, with a design partnership with Peacock TV and the Meta AI rebrand among recent projects.
DesignStudio led landmark rebrands for Airbnb, the Premier League and Deliveroo. Its systems are built to flex across screens, motion and environments without losing their core.
Moving Brands keeps brand identity and digital execution together across markets, a difficult thing at global scale. Its work for HP and the BBC shows complex brand architecture behaving consistently online.
AKQA has spent three decades building digital products for brands that define their categories, with a Nike relationship that spans most of that time. Expect global delivery and a strong innovation practice.
R/GA has moved ahead of the industry from motion graphics to connected products, and its long client partnerships suggest the model holds. The work joins product, brand and technology.
Doberman sells standing teams more often than one-off projects and always opens with paid field research. Clients see screens only after the structural argument has been made.
Active Theory works at the edge of what a browser can render: real-time 3D, spatial interfaces and interactive launches for games and entertainment.
Anagrama sits between a design studio and a consultancy, translating strategy into identity, packaging and digital. Its identity work for hospitality and food brands is widely referenced.
Porto Rocha moves between clean product branding and expressive cultural work, grounded in the context of each project. Large tech companies and cultural organizations share its client list.
Fuzzy Math takes complex information environments, from logistics platforms to financial data tools, and makes them navigable without oversimplifying. Research comes before any screen.
Prophet brings consulting rigor to brand problems and brand thinking to business ones. It is built for complex organizations where brand architecture is a board-level decision.
Resn treats the web as a creative medium and has collected awards from Wellington for two decades. Hire it when the brief calls for something technically ambitious and conceptually bold.
North Kingdom helped define the browser as a storytelling medium with its interactive work for Google, and still builds experiences where narrative and technology carry each other.
Monks combines interactive craft with production capacity few studios can match, running coordinated programs across dozens of markets at once.
Lippincott has worked on corporate identity since the 1940s and is behind brand programs for Walmart, Starbucks and Southwest Airlines.
MetaDesign builds corporate identity systems that hold together across business units, languages and markets. Its German automotive work is the clearest example.
Base Design has spent three decades on culturally rooted brand work across identity, web and editorial, with studios that operate with real autonomy.
Saffron works across governments, airlines and national tourism bodies, where cultural fluency matters as much as craft. Its portfolio is unusually international for a mid-size consultancy.
Kurppa Hosk is one of Scandinavia’s largest brand agencies, with work for Scania, H&M and Pinterest and a strong identity-systems practice.
Landor has eight decades of brand consulting behind it, from the FedEx identity to retail and packaging systems at global scale.
Interbrand connects brand decisions to business value and publishes the Best Global Brands report each year. It is a strategy partner first.
FutureBrand builds experience-led brand systems for transport, destinations and corporations, where the identity has to perform in airports and apps alike.
Design Bridge and Partners brings four decades of packaging and brand work for consumer goods companies, from naming to structural packaging.
Bleed makes decisive visual choices and does not chase trends, across identity, digital and art projects for banks, fashion houses and museums.
B-Reel is equally at home on an interactive site, a brand film or a physical installation, which saves brands from managing several partners.
Mucho brings editorial craft to brand identity, from Visa’s global rebrand to the MACBA museum’s open identity system.
Hulsbosch has defined the look of corporate Australia for four decades, from the Qantas kangaroo to Woolworths and Virgin Australia.
Foreign Policy Design builds strategy-led brands across naming, identity, spaces and editorial, with strong roots in Singapore’s cultural and hospitality scene.
Shiftbrain is one of Japan’s most respected web and brand studios, known for precise digital craft and clearly defined scopes and timelines.
84.Paris works where advertising meets digital craft, taking on branding, web builds and social campaigns with equal ambition.
Ragged Edge helps challenger brands take creative risks, with a portfolio of consumer companies that set out to look nothing like their category.
Brandient runs one of the most rigorous brand strategy practices in Eastern Europe, including Bitdefender’s global repositioning.
W.H.Y. bridges European and Asian luxury branding, with clients from LVMH to McLaren across both markets.
WANDR pitches UX in business terms, retention, churn and conversion, and does a lot of MVP and prototype work for early product teams.
Funsize designs digital products for teams from early-stage startups to Fortune 500 companies, from short sprints to multi-year partnerships.
argodesign joins UX and industrial design, with work ranging from Magic Leap’s spatial interfaces to AI products and its own consumer hardware.
Every agency gets a score out of 10. It is built from five criteria, each with a fixed weight, and each checked against the agency's own site, its live case studies and sources we can link to. Open a criterion to see exactly what we look at.
We look for published case studies with live links, the problem each project solved and what changed after launch. Concepts and unlaunched pitches count for less.
Sources: agency case studies, live client sites and apps, product pages.
Named clients are weighed by scale and by repeat engagements. The work has to be visible in the client’s live site or product, not only in a logo wall.
Sources: agency client pages, case studies, client sites.
An agency ranks higher on a list when a real share of its portfolio sits in that service or industry, not when it is one line on a long services menu.
Sources: portfolio filters, case studies per category.
Only recognition with a direct, verifiable link counts. Unlinked badges and self-reported awards are dropped from the score.
Sources: award sites, design and industry press.
We weight work launched in the last two years, so one famous project from a decade ago cannot carry the score on its own.
Sources: dated case studies, launch announcements, agency news.
The top 50 is the broad view. The focused lists narrow it down by what you need built, the industry you work in, or where you want your agency to be.
Web, brand, product and UI/UX work need different teams. Pick the list that matches the job.
Browse by service →SaaS, healthcare and fintech each come with their own constraints. These lists favor agencies that have shipped in them.
Browse by industry →If in-person workshops matter, start with agencies that have a team in your city.
Browse US cities →
