Pearlfisher

In short

Pearlfisher was set up in London in 1992 by Jonathan Ford, Mike Branson and the late Karen Welman, and now works from studios in London and New York. Packaging is where it is strongest, but the agency rarely treats a pack as a standalone job: positioning, brand architecture and identity usually arrive in the same project. That combination puts it at #1 on our packaging design ranking and #9 for brand strategy. It is also a certified B Corp.

Its client list is heavy on food, drink and personal care, from McDonald's, Gushers and Cinnamon Toast Crunch to Sipsmith, SodaStream and BYOMA. For McDonald's it built a simpler global packaging system around graphic drawings of the menu items, with CGI and motion assets to match. Coppertone got new brand architecture and a redrawn Little Miss Coppertone, and for Seedlip it named the brand and set the visual codes for non-alcoholic spirits, a category with no conventions yet.

Consumer brands that need the strategy and the shelf solved by one team, whether a heritage name losing ground or a founder inventing a category, are the clearest fit. The agency also advises on recyclable pack design and material choices. Software companies looking for product UX or app design are outside its range, and the website work it does exists to support the brand rather than as a product in its own right.