Finding a great design firm in Toronto can be difficult, not because there are so few but because there are so many. It’s almost impossible to walk down King Street West without walking past a dozen fantastically quirky design shops full of talent.
But there are a few studios that are among the best of the best that shine brightly through the creative din and provide beautiful business solutions, engaging customer experiences, and just make awesome art. So we’ve compiled this list of 5 awesome sauce design studios in Toronto, because you never know when you’ll need to call on a graphic designer for new business cards, an information architect to help tell your story, or a brilliant strategist for full-out brand mission!
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The team at BMD believes in the power of design to affect change. A multidisciplinary design firm, BMD has delivered a range of creative outputs from branding through to digital and physical experiences for over 30 years. The globally sourced but Toronto-based team at BMD creates beautiful design for clients and collaborators such as Holt Renfrew, the AGO, Harvard University, and dozens of others. For being innovative and thinking of design with both the left and right sides of their brains, BMD is a top-notch design firm.
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Idea Couture believes in changing design and brands through innovation – they challenge their clients to rethink, reimagine and reset – because design should come from innovation and innovation happens when we challenge ourselves to think differently. The clients who’ve already bought into their vision are top tier like Pepsi, MaRS, and LG. Information architects, digital strategists, and experiential leaders are found within the walls at Idea Couture.
With a poignant yet cute name, Winkreative is a globally recognized design firm that creates intelligent and bespoke solutions at its shops in Toronto, Tokyo, New York, Hong Kong, Zurich and London. This creative agency focuses on building beautiful brand strategy rooted through design. The brainchild of Canadian Tyler Brûlé, Winkreative made a name for itself in 2001 – only three years after its launch – when it engineered a new identity and vision for Switzerland’s national airline. Believing that design lives at the heart of good branding has led the Winkreative team to clients like Facebook, Amex and Porter Airlines, where they designed the adorable Mr. Porter raccoon cuteness.
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This is a new player on the Toronto design scene. Well… sort of. Jacknife is the coming together of three of the city’s most prestigious and ground-breaking firms: Oxygen, AmoebaCorp, and Apparatus, Inc. And like the three prongs coming together to create this design fork, Jacknife will focus on three main areas of Brand and Identity, Industrial Design, and Marketing Communication. We absolutely adore the work that AmoebaCorp and Oxygen have done (sorry Apparatus, Inc., we’re just not that familiar with ya!) and can’t wait to see what this trio-turned-uno interdisciplinary firm will create.
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This independent firm has a rep for producing amazingly compelling designs and brand assets. Ever the clever thinkers, Concrete’s clients have ranged from Perricone MD to Masterfile to Fabbricca, Delica Kitchen, and Pizza Nova, among a slew of others. The only commonality you’ll find in their work output is a care and attention to detail that is near unparalleled. They’re harbingers of messaging… did you get the memo?
