Why major brands are turning to .DESIGN

Facebook. Airbnb. Uber.

All of these companies have made waves in the past few years by creating business models that had never been seen before. As respected thought leaders, others have taken cues from their ideas and hundreds of similar businesses and products have sprung up in response.

These companies share another commonality as well: All have adopted .DESIGN domains for their respective business, where their design teams share insight on how they innovate and create an incredible user experience. This continues to build their footprint in design communities and bolsters their recruiting efforts. In fact, it’s already creating a trend for other companies.

.DESIGN is on the rise

When the .DESIGN domain debuted in 2015 it was among the hundreds of new domain extensions that became available for internet users for the first time. In the past two years, the extension has set itself apart as the go-to hub for designers who want to share their work for new or nimble design companies.

Of course, the brands we mentioned before were just the beginning of an impressive roster of brands that have adopted a .DESIGN domain: npr.design, booking.design, medium.design, atlassian.design, kohler.design and others. These sites give their design and research teams  a public voice. It’s a new and interesting way brands are humanizing themselves and building thought leadership in UI/UX, as well as giving back. As Facebook’s Jeff Smith wrote when launching their new .design, “Facebook.design is just getting started. Like most things at Facebook, it will be iterated on frequently. But we hope this becomes a place where designers can find great resources to grow as a designer and develop in their career. Ultimately, we hope we can help push our discipline forward.” Since designers are active content creators and consumers, many people are following along with all of the resources being released on these big .DESIGN sites.

An accessible domain for businesses of all size

But .DESIGN isn’t just for major tech hubs and Fortune 500 companies—smaller brands that focus on design fields like web design, graphic design, and interior design have also found value in this domain as a relevant keyword that speaks to what they specialize in.

.DESIGN is available to everyone, and as a fairly new domain space, offers an excellent opportunity for brands to secure keyword-rich URLs that people will remember. Designers are always pushing the envelope to create new and exciting concepts, so it only makes sense that communities of creatives are eager to adopt the .DESIGN domain.

Join the ever growing community of online innovators by registering your own .DESIGN domain.