Normally, blogs like this list a bunch of recommendations and finish with the authoring company themselves – cheeky huh? Not today! Here’s our look at the best design agencies in London.
Whilst we believe in our great quality services, in order to provide you with a valuable list of who are the best agencies in London, just like we did for Nottingham, we’ve removed ourselves from the running.
As a design agency ourselves, we’ve got the experience and skills to offer an objective opinion. We often look to some of the bigger agencies in London for inspiration and insight, so in this blog, we’ve shortlisted five. They’re innovative and exciting and we would happily recommend them to clients and prospects if they were better suited.
When choosing a design agency, it’s important to be clear on your objectives and select a team that can help you achieve them. Some agencies specialise in a specific technology or design style, whilst others offer a full range of services.
Read more about getting the most from your digital design agency to help you understand what to think about during this selection process.
Let’s get to it – in this blog, you’ll find an overview of each agency, the services they offer, what they are best suited for and finally a short opinion from us!
Best design agency for beautiful brand activations
Who are they? Design Studio creates brands and experiences through radical collaboration.
Our holistic, insightful and unconventional working methods go deeper and push further, to inspire deep connection within your teams and communities.
We live and die by this philosophy, because we know it delivers remarkable change.
Which services do they offer?
The website goes into further detail about what Design Studio offer but here are the highlights:
- Brand & Digital Strategy
- Brand Identity
- Brand Campaigns
- Interactive Experiences
- Employer Branding
- Employee Engagement
- Organisational Design
What are they best suited for?
Design Studio is definitely suited to bigger brands that are looking for a full set of branding and digital design services.
What do we think?
This is a well-known and highly respected agency in the design world mostly because they are very good at what they do! Design Studio has been around for a long time and has built up a very impressive portfolio of clients including Premier League, Penguin Random House and Airbnb.
You can see just by looking through the website the kind of detail the team goes into when it comes to brand activations and design work. Our favourite is with British Airways.
The goal was to capture its 100-year aviation heritage whilst offering a new, smooth digital experience.
After experiencing the full customer journey themselves, the team went on to re-design a new digital vision to give BA customers the best possible experience. The team reworked the website architecture and design to put customers’ needs at its core.
To bring this to life they also produced a brand new design system. This featured effortless motion and navigation inspired by journeys through the sky. Check out the full case study to see all the beautiful details – a brilliant project!
Video via Design Studio
Best design agency for innovative projects
Who are they? Crowd Form – We build digital products and launch ventures for the next evolution of the web.
Which services do they offer?
- Product Strategy
- Product Design
- Product Development
- Product Growth
What are they best suited for?
Innovative end-to-end projects such as NFT design and build, AI-led technology and e-commerce.
What do we think?
We love the work by this agency and the showreel really brings it to life! The team at Crowd Form work on forward-thinking projects including NFTs – they stand out from the crowd (no pun intended) with their offering.
One of our favourite projects is the platform for AndCo – a coworking subscription enabling members to find and book work spots at hospitality venues. On the outside, the website is clean and easy to use and the back end of the platform is really well thought through.
As the Crowd Form team worked on this project from day one, they have been able to build a successful platform that offers both members (people looking for a place to work) and venues (who may be quiet on Monday afternoons) a user-centric experience.
They’ve gone into a lot of detail when it comes to the digital experience (new revenue streams, fast wifi) which makes such a difference when it comes to the success of a business like this. We really recommend the team at Crowd Form.
Image via Crowd Form
Best design agency for Magento/Adobe Commerce websites
Who are they? The Pixel – We are a full-service Gold Adobe Solution Partner offering design, UX, development, testing, integration, support and hosting services for eCommerce merchants.
Whilst our expertise lies in design, development, integration and support of the Adobe Commerce application, our number one objective is to create a successful working relationship that our clients can rely upon for the future.
Which services do they offer?
- Design & UX
- Adobe Commerce:
- Development
- Support
- Hosting
- Audit
- ERP Connector
What are they best suited for? Without a doubt, e-commerce platforms and websites on Magento. Learn more about the differences between Magento (Adobe Commerce) and Shopify in this handy blog.
What do we think?
The Pixel has got a fantastic portfolio of real household names, think Screwfix, National Trust and PoundShop.com.
They have a real handle on both the UX and the technical side of the websites and platforms. This enables clients to see the benefits in conversions and revenue.
Over the course of a year, Osprey London increased revenue by almost 25% with the optimisations that The Pixel team implemented. The updates and additional functionalities were added to demonstrate that they really know what they are doing – a great choice for a Magento site!
Image via The Pixel
Best design agency for daring design work
Who are they? Fortnight Studio – We help ambitious and caring brands to bring their ideas and digital products to life. Through ingenious design.
Which services do they offer?
- Branding
- Brand Strategy
- Visual Identity
- Art Direction
- Design
- Wireframes and Prototypes
- UI & UX Design
- Design Strategy
- Development
- Mobile Apps
- Webflow
- React/Gatsby
What are they best suited for?
Brave, daring and unique digital design and UX work.
What do we think?
We love Fortnight Studio, to be honest, the quality of their work is great and there’s a lot of personality in the designs. It feels very modern and truly is at the forefront of digital design work!
Take a look at the Thursday case study, for example, it’s clean, simple, well thought out and mostly excitingly – it’s brave. Whilst this example is more playful, you can see throughout the case studies that Fortnight Studio offer a variety of great UX and design work.
From mortgage platforms to gaming companies, each has its own really beautiful style and there’s plenty of award-winning work on there too.
We continue to be very impressed with Fortnight and look to them for inspiration!
Image via Fortnight
Best design agency for authentic website experiences
Who are they? Kota – We’re a creative web design agency based in London that crafts beautiful and original websites for brands who refuse to blend in.
Which services do they offer?
- Creative Web Design
- Branding
- E-Commerce
- Web Development
- Digital Marketing
- WordPress
What are they best suited for? Stand-out website experiences that are guaranteed to bring your brand to life online, authentic.
What do we think? Compared to some of the larger agencies we’ve mentioned, Kota is a slightly smaller, probably more affordable agency. Whilst it may have fewer ‘big names’ in its portfolio, the quality of Kota’s work is fantastic.
Take the Martin Building project for example. The company itself offer a blend of contemporary architecture and civic responsibility and they wanted their new online presence to truly reflect that.
You can see that the design truly reflects that – it’s creative yet looks trustworthy and premium. ‘Where elegance meets purpose’ looks to be company’s tagline and that is definitely showcased throughout the digital experience Kota has designed and built – love it!
Image via Kota
