Five ways a .design domain helps you win clients

Read on and discover the reasons why these design professionals — from graphic and web designers to architects and interior designers — chose their .design domain names, and why they haven't looked back since.

1. .design helps you to stand out

Succeeding in a creative industry is all about standing out from the crowd as professional, innovative and forward-thinking. That's exactly why Sam Rodell Architecture, an award-winning architecture firm based in Spokane, Washington, chose rodell.design for their website.

The architecture practice has achieved massive success due to its unique combination of building expertise and creative design. The company website used to be located at rodell.co, but they quickly transitioned to rodell.design. "I really like it: It feels right," says Sam. " It's just one more tiny little way of distinguishing our firm from the herd."

2. .design gives you authority

Hybert.design is a family-owned graphic design company that specialises in design for publishers, marketers and businesses. Based in Berkshire, UK, the company was one of the first to adopt a .design domain.

"Design is part of our company name, so the logical step was to transition over to the new domain to enhance our brand," explains founder Tom Hybert. "The new domain is more descriptive, inviting, and memorable. I also believe it enhances our authority and keeps us up to date."

3. .design is international

When your website address in a country domain, such as co.uk or co.ie, you're immediately announcing to the world where you're based, which may make people from other countries instinctively turn away. In 2021, however, design has never been more international, and a .design domain is a perfect way of showing that your reach is global.

"A .design name is the new way to discover new talent all over the world," says Rodrigo Montoya, an architect and interior designer from Bogotá-Columbia. "I actually feel that I can get into a closer dialogue with my potential customers using roko.design as my main page."

4. .design makes your branding clearer

People don't always consider how difficult it is to recognise a company name from its URL. A .design domain, however, makes things a lot clearer. That's one of the reasons Transom, a design firm in Seattle, Washington, made the switch to Transom.design.

The company had struggled to find the right domain name, explained owner and creative director Andrew Means. "At the early stages we unwisely chose transomco.com, which led to confusion regarding our name. "When I heard about the .design top-level domain it seemed the obvious choice to clarify both what we do and our name."

5. “Design” is in your brand name

A strong reason to choose a .design domain is when the word 'design' is part of your actual company name. This was the case with Energi Design, an award-winning motion graphics and web design/UI/UX company, previously based in London and San Francisco, and now in Munich.

After adopting a number of domain names such as energi.click, energidesign.com and clickenergi.com, they were finally able to acquire the perfect domain to match: energi.design. As creative director Steve Holmes says, "Energi Design is the actual name of my company, founded 20 years ago. So finally having the exact domain name to match it is perfect. When I learned about .design becoming available, I signed up right away."