AIA 17, an eye opening industry conference

AIA 17, an eye opening industry conference

For the first time, our team participated at The American Institute of Architects’ annual conference and expo as an exhibitor. It was held in Orlando, Florida from April 27 -29th.  It was truly eye opening as one of the largest conferences and most impressive expo floors we’ve ever seen. Hundreds of exhibitors showcased interior furnishings and products, lighting systems, smart building technologies and new sustainable options.

As the operator of the .design domain, we were excited to introduce the domain to architects, interior designers and other creative professionals who would benefit from having a .design domain. Although we didn’t have as glamorous a booth as some of the largest exhibitors ;-), the reactions and feedback we received were encouraging, especially the comments from young architects and design students.

Design teams using Medium to create a .design site

Design teams using Medium to create a .design site

I’ve previously pointed to major corporate use cases of .design, like facebook.design and airbnb.design. One of the things that is so interesting about these sites is that they are content rich and full of a variety of resources, from videos to interviews to design manifestos to event promotion and individual contributions from team members.

Now, we’re seeing an ingenious corporate use case that creates just as interesting a destination with far less work on the actual website itself. The goal is largely the same, to focus and raise the voice of a company’s design team and bolster their recruiting, but the medium (ha!) is different.

.ink Approved by MIIT of China

On February 6th, Top Level Design’s .ink received the official approval by China’s MIIT (Ministry of Industry and Information Technology). It is also the 6th new gTLD in the Latin alphabet approved for sale in mainland China.

.ink is in the 3rd batch of new gTLDs to get China’s approval. It’s also the only one in English in this batch. The other four are all Chinese IDNs.

The Chinese government requires all TLDs to be certified by MIIT. Being approved means that Chinese residents can register and host .ink names in mainland China.

Since the launch of .ink, a hype for the TLD has been spreading all over the Chinese domain market. Chinese domain buyers recognize and appreciate the connection between .ink and Chinese history of calligraphy and literature. It’s easy to memorize and also been interpreted as an abbreviation for ‘Internet King’.

As of February 14th, 2017, 25,728 .ink domains are registered worldwide, 74% of which are managed by Chinese registrars. With the MIIT certification, we are excited to see more tractions for .ink domains in China.

Additional info.:

Where to buy .ink

Examples of live .ink websites

Major .design usage from Facebook, Airbnb, T-Mobile

Major .design usage from Facebook, Airbnb, T-Mobile

The benefits of new top-level domains (nTLDs) for companies and individuals that were never able to get a great .com are obvious. Now, they can have unique, short and brandable domain names and, with options like .design, they can add context in a way that .com never could.

Recently, there have been some really exciting developments for .design in particular. While it has already differentiated itself as one of the most successful new TLDs, it now seems to be one of the only extensions that is receiving significant traction with the world’s largest and hottest companies, which are creating sites like facebook.design, airbnb.design, medium.design, and telekom.design (from T-Mobile’s parent company, Deutsche Telekom).