Code and Theory Honored by Fast Company’s Innovation by Design for Four Consecutive Years

Accolades include being named to the Design Company of the Year list and receiving the Enduring Impact award for companies with 15-plus years of success.

Code and Theory has received the dual honor of being named a Fast Company Design Company of the Year and selected for its “Enduring Impact” award, which honors the best design among companies with 15-plus years in business.

The recognition marks the agency’s fourth consecutive year in which Code and Theory has been selected for Fast Company’s Innovation by Design Awards.

Technology has made it easier to make things, but most businesses are finding it harder to make things that matter. It's a gap that keeps growing and the one that Code and Theory is uniquely built to close. For 25 years, the agency has brought creativity and technology together through a differentiated balance of 50% creatives and 50% engineers. Code and Theory has evolved that model into a digital transformation engine built to handle disruption, combining human creativity, forward-deployed expertise and agentic solutions to drive tangible business outcomes.

Over the past year, that work has delivered measurable results across industries:

• TIME: Transformed the legacy publisher into a modern, AI-powered platform, increasing digital revenue by 159% year over year.
• Stanley Black & Decker: Created one design system for more than 30 brands across 55 markets, helping increase e-commerce conversion by 40%.
• JBL: Created the industry’s first AI-native discovery system, built for the way search works now, growing AI-driven referrals by 2,434% year over year
• T. Rowe Price: Unified 47 fragmented sites on a single system, saving 100,000 team hours and $15M in avoided costs.
• NFL: Reinvented NFL.com to help fans find what they want faster, increasing NFL+ discovery by 104% year over year and tripling acquisition.

The 2026 awards also recognize work from across the Code and Theory Network. Instrument and ŌURA have been named honorees in the UX Design category for Instrument’s reimagining of the ŌURA app experience. Instrument’s Playspace, an open, living archive of experiments, tools and interactive sketches, has also been named a finalist in the Experimental and Conceptual Design category. The platform gives teams a place to test ideas, build prototypes and turn emerging technologies into tangible, usable experiences.

This recognition builds on a broader history of Fast Company honors for the Code and Theory Network. In 2025, Code and Theory was named to Fast Company’s World’s Most Innovative Companies list in the Design and Teamwork categories, while Instrument was named to Fast Company’s list of Best Workplaces for Innovators. Code and Theory’s previous Innovation by Design honors include three distinctions for NBC’s Big Board, the NFL app and Design Company of the Year (2025).

This year, Code and Theory was honored alongside Google, Canva, SharkNinja and Design Bridge and Partners in the Design Agency of the Year category as well as Adobe, L’Oreal and CVS Health in the Enduring Impact category.

Dan Gardner, Founder at Code and Theory says: “Entering our 25th year, we know that we’ve barely begun to see what technology can do. There are, what feels like, endless opportunities to combine technology and creativity to create solutions and experiences that didn’t exist before. That’s what drives us. We’re thankful to our clients who allow us to keep pushing what can be done, and we are grateful to Fast Company’s continued recognition of us, our clients and all of the talent at Code and Theory.”

Brendan Vaughan, Editor-in-Chief at Fast Company says: “The Innovation by Design Awards have always recognized the ideas that challenge convention and show what’s possible when design is treated as a strategic force, not an afterthought. Congratulations to this year’s honorees, who demonstrate how thoughtful design can solve meaningful problems and create new possibilities for people and businesses.”