Best Design Agencies in London (2026)

Introduction

London has one of the densest concentrations of design studios in the world, and the 14 below cover the range: partner-led practices with ten partners, typographic studios of a handful of people, and agencies now sitting inside larger groups. They were chosen for recent work, the strength of their client lists and their standing with peers.

The last year brought some changes in ownership and shape. DesignStudio relaunched as Further in September 2025, backed by Waterland Private Equity and expanded through the purchase of motion studio Analog and immersive agency Pixel Artworks. SomeOne now presents itself as a VCCP company. Pentagram’s Domenic Lippa delivered two of the city’s most visible identities of 2026, for St Paul’s Cathedral in April and for the London Design Festival in September.

Every studio here has an active London office in 2026. Identity and strategy specialists such as North are covered on our branding agencies page instead. The list is in no order of merit, since the right studio depends on the brief, the budget and how closely you want to work with the people doing the design.

The best design agencies in London

1. Pentagram

Independent, partner-owned · Islington · pentagram.com

Pentagram is owned by its partners, and each partner leads their own team and is the main contact for their clients. The London office sits in a former Post Office sorting house on Packington Street in Islington and has ten partners, among them Harry Pearce, Marina Willer, Domenic Lippa, Angus Hyland, Jody Hudson-Powell and Luke Powell.

Recent London work includes a new identity for St Paul’s Cathedral, led by Domenic Lippa and launched in April 2026, with a custom wordmark drawn from lettering in the cathedral’s stonework. Lippa’s team also designed the identity and signage for the 2026 London Design Festival, and Luke Powell and Jody Hudson-Powell created a typeface family for SMCC in Japan. Since partners run distinct teams, it is worth choosing the partner as carefully as the firm.

2. Made Thought

Part of WPP · Clerkenwell · madethought.com

Made Thought calls itself a global creative office, with studios on St John’s Lane in Clerkenwell and on Spring Street in New York. WPP acquired it in December 2021. Its awards include a D&AD Black Pencil for the G.F. Smith identity, a D&AD Pencil for a Feeld campaign and a Pentaward for the cannabis brand Juana.

The client list leans towards luxury, culture and technology: Chanel, Stella McCartney, adidas, MoMA, Nothing, Mandarin Oriental, Four Seasons and Tom Dixon. Its hospitality identities, such as Viceroy, show how it carries a system across print, digital and physical spaces.

3. Hato

Independent · Barbican · hato.co

Hato is a design practice working across creative, strategy, technology and production, led by partners Ken Kirton (creative director) and Emete Kirton (brand director). It has studios in London and Hong Kong, a publishing arm in Hato Press, and a shop on Lower Stable Street in King’s Cross. The London studio moved to the Golden Lane Estate, next to the Barbican, around 2022.

Much of its work is for cultural organisations. In January 2025 it rebranded New Contemporaries, the non-profit for emerging British artists that Hato has worked with for close to a decade, ahead of the organisation’s exhibition at the ICA. It also designed an identity for the Barbican and Golden Lane Neighbourhood Forum with lettering taken from the estates’ Brutalist architecture.

4. OK-RM

Independent · Bethnal Green · ok-rm.co.uk

Oliver Knight and Rory McGrath founded OK-RM in 2008. The studio works across identities, books, art direction, film, exhibitions and installations from a studio on The Oval in Bethnal Green, and has won several Tokyo TDC book design prizes. Creative Boom included it in a May 2026 round-up of studios that designers are watching.

Clients include the Guggenheim, Tate, The Met, Lisson Gallery, South London Gallery, JW Anderson and Kenzo, and the studio has worked with artists including Wolfgang Tillmans and Juergen Teller. Its monograph, A Meaningful Order, is published by its own imprint partner InOtherWords. The website is a temporary holding page at the moment, so ask for a current portfolio.

5. A Practice for Everyday Life

Independent · Hackney · apracticeforeverydaylife.com

Kirsty Carter and Emma Thomas founded A Practice for Everyday Life (APFEL) in 2003, and the studio works from Temple Street in east London. Typography sits at the centre of its practice: it draws custom typefaces for clients and publishes retail fonts. Carter and Thomas are co-presidents of the UK chapter of AGI.

Cultural work includes the identity and campaign for La Biennale di Venezia 2022 and graphics for Michael Clark: Cosmic Dancer at the Barbican. Commercial clients include Aesop, Birkenstock, Erdem, JW Anderson, John Lobb and Vitra, alongside galleries such as David Zwirner and Gagosian.

6. Studio Sutherl&

Independent · Southwark · studio-sutherland.co.uk

Jim Sutherland set up Studio Sutherl& in 2014, having co-founded Hat-trick Design in 2001. The studio assembles a team for each project from a network of artists, architects, writers and strategists. It counts more than 150 awards, including 82 D&AD-selected projects and four Yellow Pencils, and was D&AD’s most awarded design agency in 2017.

Clients include the Natural History Museum, Wimbledon, Williams F1, Landsec, Welsh National Opera and Prostate Cancer UK, and Sutherland has designed more than 50 Royal Mail stamps. The core studio is very small, which suits clients who want the founder on every detail and may not suit a programme that needs a large standing team.

7. Spin

Independent · Wandsworth · spin.co.uk

Tony Brook founded Spin in 1992 and runs it with managing director Patricia Finegan and design director Evie Brook from a studio in Wandsworth. It is known for identity work with a strong typographic base. All design is done in-house, with freelance specialists in programming, animation and type brought in when a project needs them.

For the BBC, Spin worked with BBC Creative on the campaign introducing BBC Reith, the corporation’s own typeface. Brook also co-founded the design publisher Unit Editions with Adrian Shaughnessy in 2009, and the studio’s work is collected in Spin: 360 and Spin: Adventures in Typography.

8. NB Studio

Independent, founder-led · Southwark · nbstudio.co.uk

Alan Dye and Nick Finney founded NB in 1997. It designs brands, packaging and communications from a studio near Southwark, and has won Brand Impact Awards for work with Streamtime and the Southbank Centre. The studio also published Michael Wolff: Leap Before You Look, a book on the late designer’s thinking.

Pernod Ricard has been a client for more than 16 years, covering Beefeater, Chivas Regal and Ballantine’s, including recent packaging for Ballantine’s & Cola. Cultural and education clients include the National Theatre, London Sinfonietta, Birmingham Royal Ballet, LSE and the University of Oxford.

9. Accept & Proceed

Independent, certified B Corp · London · acceptandproceed.com

David Johnston founded Accept & Proceed in 2006. It became a certified B Corp in 2017, the fourth UK creative agency to do so, and is a member of 1% for the Planet. The agency is based in London with offices in Australia and the US, and its work runs from brand strategy and identity to digital experiences and physical activations.

Nike is a long-standing client, and recent projects include Nike Climate Week 2025. Other recent work covers brand rules for Vans, two IBM projects on AI products and governance, and an announcement for Neko Health in New York. Arc’teryx, LEGO and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory are also on the client list.

10. SomeOne

Part of VCCP · Hoxton · someoneinlondon.com

SomeOne describes itself as the challenger agency for challenger brands, working on brand launches, relaunches and digital design. Its founders are Simon Manchipp, Gary Holt and David Law, and it now operates as a VCCP company from Scawfell Street in Hoxton, with a second office in Sydney. In 2026 it was named Design Agency of the Year at the Creativepool Awards and took 16 wins at the Transform Awards.

Clients include Co-op, London Spirit, Graff, UK Parliament, Equals, Norwich City FC and Simmons & Simmons. Its earlier rebrand of Saga drew wide trade coverage. Being part of VCCP gives access to advertising and media teams, which matters if the identity is to launch with a campaign.

11. Further

Backed by Waterland Private Equity · Clerkenwell · further.group

Further is the new name for DesignStudio, which relaunched in September 2025. Founders Paul Stafford and Ben Wright broadened the offer from identity to campaigns, events and digital, and brought motion studio Analog and immersive agency Pixel Artworks into the group. It has offices in Clerkenwell, Brooklyn and Dubai.

As DesignStudio it created identities for Airbnb, Eurostar and the Premier League. Current work shown includes UFC, Xbox, EA Sports and Rainbow Six Siege. With several businesses now under one name, ask which team and which group company will carry out the work.

12. Bibliothèque

Independent · Clerkenwell · bibliothequedesign.com

Bibliothèque was founded in 2003 and works from Clerkenwell Road. It treats design as problem solving that can apply to any sector, and its services run from brand identity and type design to wayfinding, exhibitions and UX. The studio has been a member of AGI since 2011 and has won eight D&AD awards.

Clients include the Design Museum, the V&A, the Natural History Museum, adidas, Pringle and David Collins Studio, along with several of Alan Yau’s restaurants. Its mix of cultural and hospitality work makes it a good fit for projects that move between print, screen and physical space.

13. Graphic Thought Facility

Independent · London · graphicthoughtfacility.com

Paul Neale, Nigel Robinson and Andy Stevens founded Graphic Thought Facility (GTF) in 1990 after studying at the Royal College of Art. The studio works across campaigns, exhibitions, identities, packaging, publications, retail and wayfinding, and its work featured in the Barbican’s survey Communicate: Independent British Graphic Design since the Sixties.

Its client relationships tend to run long. GTF designed the identity and campaigns for Frieze, the identity, catalogues and quarterly magazine for Gagosian, retail and signage for Vitra, the Design Museum’s identity and exhibitions for the Science Museum. Kvadrat and Shakespeare’s Globe are also clients.

14. Kellenberger-White

Independent · Islington · kellenberger-white.com

Eva Kellenberger and Sebastian White run Kellenberger-White from Shepperton Road in Islington, and have traded since 2009. Both founders work on every project with a small core team and a network of strategists, architects, photographers and writers.

Recent projects include the campaign for the Turner Prize 2026, a rebrand for the Courtauld, wayfinding for Kingston Riverside, an identity system for the Glasgow International festival and marketing for the Fitzwilliam Museum. Other clients include Barbican Art Gallery, the V&A, Tate, Wellcome Collection, White Cube and Lisson Gallery.

What to look for in a London design agency

Start with size and who will design the work. London studios range from Pentagram, where a named partner leads each project, to practices of a few people where the founders draw everything themselves. Larger studios can run several workstreams at once. Smaller ones give you senior attention throughout, though they may bring in freelancers for motion, code or photography.

Look for sector and medium fit. Many of the studios here built their names on cultural clients such as galleries, museums and festivals, and that work transfers well to brands that want a distinct visual voice. If the project needs custom type, wayfinding, packaging or exhibition design, ask to see finished examples of that specific discipline, as well as the identity work.

Check ownership and scope, since both shifted in 2025 and 2026. Further now combines design with campaigns, events and immersive work under private equity ownership, SomeOne sits within VCCP, and Made Thought belongs to WPP. Group ownership can mean wider services and more process. Independents usually keep decisions with the people you meet.

Finally, agree how the project will be run day to day. Identity work produces a lot of files: layered artwork, font licences, photography, motion assets and guidelines. Ask where these will live, how many review rounds are included, how feedback will be collected and in what form the final assets and guidelines will be handed over.

How Fabric helps design agency teams

Fabric gives a design studio one workspace for its files, references, client feedback and project knowledge, with AI search across all of it. Large layered artwork, photography and motion 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 versions. There is more on this setup in Fabric for designers.

Research and reference gathering is a large part of studio work. Search finds files by meaning across documents, images, PDFs and transcribed recordings, and colour search finds visual assets by shade. Similar search takes an image and surfaces related work by composition, colour and subject. References can then be laid out on a canvas, an infinite whiteboard that embeds Figma files and video, for moodboards shared with the team or the client.

For review, clients can leave threaded comments on any file through a shared link, without creating an account, and annotations let reviewers highlight and comment on PDFs such as presentation decks. Timestamped comments and drawing on images and video are coming soon. Our guide to the best design feedback tools compares the options.

At handover, a guidelines folder can be published as a web page that updates when the source files change, which suits brand guidelines. Add password protection for work under embargo, and link analytics to see when each named recipient opened a presentation and how long they spent with 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 London?

There is no single answer, because the right studio depends on the brief. Pentagram has the largest partner bench in the city and led the 2026 identities for St Paul’s Cathedral and the London Design Festival. SomeOne was named Design Agency of the Year at the 2026 Creativepool Awards, and Studio Sutherl& has one of the longest D&AD records of any small studio.

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

The two overlap. Design agencies in this list work across many media, including type, books, exhibitions, packaging and wayfinding, as well as identity. Branding agencies tend to lead with strategy, naming and positioning before the visual work. If strategy is the main need, see our list of the best branding agencies in London.

What happened to DesignStudio?

DesignStudio relaunched as Further in September 2025. The business, backed by Waterland Private Equity, added motion studio Analog and immersive agency Pixel Artworks and now offers campaigns, events and digital work as well as identity. It still has a London office in Clerkenwell.

Which London design studios specialise in cultural work?

Several studios here built their reputations with galleries, museums and festivals. A Practice for Everyday Life, OK-RM, Kellenberger-White, Graphic Thought Facility and Hato all have long lists of cultural clients, from Tate and the V&A to Frieze and the Venice Biennale.

Are any London design agencies certified B Corps?

Accept & Proceed became a certified B Corp in 2017, the fourth UK creative agency to do so, and is also a member of 1% for the Planet. Ask any studio you are considering for its current certification status, since B Corp status is reassessed every three years.

Related lists

Design agencies in other cities: New York · Los Angeles · Berlin · Amsterdam · Sydney

More in London: Creative agencies · Branding agencies · UX design agencies · Advertising agencies · Animation · Photography studios

Run your studio on Fabric: Fabric for designers · Fabric for creative teams · Brand guidelines on Fabric