18(a) Describe the mission/purpose of your proposed gTLD

Prototypical answer:

gTLDFull Legal NameE-mail suffixDetail
.designTop Level Design, LLCgmail.comView

Top Level Design, LLCʹs goal for the .design gTLD is to create a designated Internet space for designers. Presently, designers are relegated to ambiguous TLDs like .com and .net, which says nothing about their work. This TLD will allow them to identify themselves from among the billions of other web pages populating the Internet, and allow Internet users to easily be able to identify them as well. Most important, it will be a place where designers can further enhance the realization of their ideas and concepts which make them unique.

The design market includes a wide array of specialties, including but not limited to: graphic designers, interior designers, fashion designers, industrial designers, web designers, architects, game designers, civil engineers, and essentially any individual or company specializing in the practical and artistic aspects of creating a unique product. The number of international firms and individuals involved in the design process, and who would consequently be served by a .design TLD, is well into the hundreds of thousands. The 2010 figures provided by the US census show that the US market alone has 21,500 fashion designers; 66,500 floral designers; 279,200 graphic designers; 40,800 industrial designers; 56,500 interior designers; and 11,700 set and exhibit designers. While these are individuals and not companies, and there is no clear way of verifiably turning these figures into projected domains registered, it certainly gives an idea of how large and how varied the design sector is. By fully understanding the size and scope of this market, it is possible to see the utility of and need for a .design TLD. Furthermore, using a tool we have created to analyze the second-level names in the Internet’s most popular zone file, the .com TLD, we have found that the word design appears 721,400 times in registered .com domains, and that 322,804 of those occurrences appear at the end of a multi-word domain. Again, there is no clear way to turn these figures into projected domains registered, but it shows the large size of the market that we would be targeting, and how many people a .design TLD could positively affect.

It is our goal to become a model TLD within ICANN’s expansion of the root zone, and to embody the innovative, inclusive spirit that created the program. Like ICANN, we recognize the many stakeholders that have an equal voice in the safe, productive development of the root zone and the Internet, and we specifically want to cater to the voices of those designers involved in presenting their work and talent on the web. We trust that as we become the recognized, secure, and personal designation for all types of international designers, the Internet and its users will benefit from clear designation and the creation of thousands of unique and compelling design related websites. The .design TLD will be an open TLD, with wholesale pricing higher than currently available gTLDs. We believe that this pricing strategy will help encourage the productive development of the domain space, and encourage those individuals that wish to create malicious content, parked pages, or are generally not looking to reflect their involvement in design through their TLD to use cheaper TLD offerings to host their content.

It is also our goal at Top Level Design, LLC’s to make the .design TLD a viable and profitable business. We believe this to be the most likely scenario, and the projections and financial analysis included in this application demonstrate such. We hope to grow at a rate that allows us to continually improve our registry offerings and increase benefits for both our customers and employees. However, our commitments and projections at this time are focused on conservatively estimating our revenue in order to best prepare for a TLD market with the possibility of many more TLDs.

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gTLDFull Legal NameE-mail suffixzDetail