Jones Knowles Ritchie

In short

Jones Knowles Ritchie, usually just JKR, was founded in London in 1990 and runs studios in Shoreditch and on Spring Street in New York. It made its name on the supermarket shelf, and packaging is still the work most people know it for, which is why it ranks #2 on our packaging design list. The studio's habit is to dig up a brand's oldest assets and make them louder rather than replace them.

Burger King is the reference case: a rebrand that swapped the glossy 2000s look for something closer to the food, and JKR reports a 7.8% stock rise after launch. For Coca-Cola it unified the identity across 200 markets and brought back the Arden Square mark. KFC's bucket became the centre of a wider brand world. The portfolio now reaches past food into tech and finance too, with Intuit, Chime, Mozilla, Uber and Yahoo.

Big consumer brands with a famous past and a tired present will get the most from JKR, particularly food, drink and restaurant chains where packaging, signage and identity have to change together across many markets. The services list includes UI and website design, but those serve the brand system. Teams whose main need is a software product, app flows or a design system for engineers should hire a product studio.