Since 2000, thematically selected posters from the museum's poster collection have been presented in the display windows of the Swiss National Bank in Zurich - open to the general public from the outside. Four exhibitions are held each year.

Every December, expert juries select the best works of the year in the categories of architecture, landscape and design and present them in a small exhibition. A wooden carved rabbit is awarded in the gold, silver and bronze categories. The Best is organized by Hochparterre magazine and presented by the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich.

The Swiss Poster Award or, from 2023, the "WOOHW!" creative competition is a cooperation between the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich (jury member) and the Allgemeine Plakatgesellschaft (APG SGA). It is the most important competition for poster advertising in Switzerland and is awarded annually.

In cooperation with Schule+Kultur (Education Department of the Canton of Zurich), Schulkultur Stadt Zürich and Kultur macht Schule (Cultural Education Department of the Canton of Aargau), educational formats are offered for pupils. In addition to the (co-)financing, the communication of the mediation offer by the three authorities to the schools in the cantons of Zurich and Aargau is of great value, as are the opportunities for networking in the field of cultural education in schools.

The Swissvotes database is a service provided by Année Politique Suisse at the Institute of Political Science at the University of Bern. The data platform on Swiss referendums provides the public and academics with freely accessible, scientifically sound, comprehensible and politically neutral information on all federal referendums since 1848. Since fall 2019, the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich has been collecting posters on referendums since 1848 and continuously linking them to the Swissvotes database, while eMuseum.ch makes content information from Swissvotes accessible.

Over 120 museums and more than 370 volunteers throughout Switzerland are involved in the volunteer project "TiM - Tandem im Museum". Together, they provide many people with low-threshold access to culture every year. TiM is committed to social sustainability, connects people from different generations and cultural backgrounds and turns museums into places of encounter. The museum is a partner institution and cooperates in a wide variety of events, e.g. on World History Day.

The Art Museums of Switzerland association promotes the nationwide exchange of know-how, information and experience between the affiliated museums. Joint activities aim to make the Swiss art experience better known and more popular. In cooperation with Switzerland Tourism, foreign markets are jointly developed in order to bundle the relevant resources. The following museums are members of the association: Fondation Beyeler, Fotozentrum Winterthur, Kunsthaus Zürich, Kunstmuseum Basel, Mamco - Musée d'art moderne et contemporain, MASI Lugano - Museo d'arte della Svizzera italiana, Musée de l'Elysée, Museum für Gestaltung Zürich, Museum Tinguely, Switzerland Tourism, Zentrum Paul Klee.

The museum has been cooperating with machTheater since 2021. The machTheater is a place of training and further education for children and young people with disabilities and realizes cultural offers. In collaboration with the House of Color, machTheater developed scenic tours for the exhibition Le Corbusier and Color. This resulted in a film in 2022, which has since been shown as part of the outreach project "Le Corbusier on the Road" with live interludes and discussions in retirement and rehabilitation centers, in community centers or at events. For the exhibition Talking Bodies - Body Images in Posters (3.11.2023-25.2.2024), machTheater devised performances in the middle of the exhibition space.

As part of a project (2022-2025), the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich is laying the foundations for collecting "born-digital objects" and expanding its collection with digital cultural assets. The knowledge required for this has been and is being developed and shared with numerous institutions, including the Victoria and Albert Museum V&A, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art SFMOMA and the Museum of Applied Arts Vienna MAK. The museum also cooperates with Swissnex to invite international designers from the USA, Brazil, South Africa, India, China and Japan. Based on objects from the collection, they will create new digital works that reflect the historical dimensions and use modern technologies. This will be accompanied by three events dealing with the topics of design and digitality as well as sustainable work and intercultural exchange in the digital age.

On the occasion of the exhibitions in the Pavillon Le Corbusier, exhibits are loaned by the Fondation Le Corbusier, Paris, which also supports the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich with a great deal of know-how and contacts. In return, the knowledge acquired for the exhibitions will be made available to the Fondation Le Corbusier for future research, exhibition and publication projects.