We at Top Level Design are excited to announce that we’ve reached a deal to transfer the rights of the .design top-level domain to GoDaddy Registry. We signed the deal today and transition will occur over the next few months.
Founded by Raymond King and Peter Brual, Top Level Design applied for .design in 2012 and launched it to market in 2015. Over the last 6 years, we built .design into one of the foremost new top level domains ever introduced to the market. This deal reflects the unique potential of the .design namespace as well as the hard work of our team and the success we have had together.
The .design domain name has been adopted by over 120,000 designers of all types, with particular strength in digital-first designers such as graphic designers, web, and UX designers. It is the only new domain extension to be used by dozens of name brands, such as amazon.design, airbnb.design, tacobell.design, and spotify.design, which operate these secondary sites for their design recruitment and content marketing. Given the digital literacy of designers, the necessity of an online portfolio, and the many different fields of design, the .design domain was well-positioned to become a known commodity with professional and aspiring designers. It has achieved a landmark level of use and familiarity within its target market. Designers naturally care about their brand aesthetic and they appreciate the branding potential of a simple and clear .design domain for their URL and email addresses.
Our team at Top Level Design has been intently focused on .design as the keystone of our portfolio thus far. We entered a busy marketplace, with hundreds of new domain extensions introduced between 2013 – 2015 and not enough retail space nor enough organic market awareness. Despite these obstacles, we pioneered unique direct-to-consumer marketing that is rare for domain registries, which more often fulfill a technical infrastructure role rather than lead sales and marketing efforts. We were lucky enough to travel the world and partner with designers, organizations, and entrepreneurs of all types to build a diverse community within the .design namespace.
The sale of .design to GoDaddy Registry is a milestone for our company and will allow our small and dedicated team to work on our other .wiki, .ink, and .gay domain extensions, most notably .gay, which launched in 2020 as an industry pioneer via its donation and anti-hate policies.
GoDaddy Registry is the perfect place for .design to land. They care deeply about each top-level-domain they operate. They understand what it means to build great brands and we can't wait to see how they continue developing .design. With their scale and dedication to innovation, there is no doubt that .design will further spread through the world. The members of their team have been our friends and colleagues for our entire journey and we’ll be cheering them on from this point forward!
– Ray