If you’re a designer, you’ve probably chosen to specialize in a particular niche of the design industry. However, it’s good practice to zoom out every once in a while and let designers in other disciplines inspire you. In fact, the world of design offers inspiration to everyone: the quantity of widely-followed blogs and social media accounts about design attest to its popularity and resonance with professionals of all kinds. 

As a designer, you understand the importance of smart presentation. A top-level domain like .DESIGN makes it clear who you are and what you do, just from your domain name alone. It also adds a professional edge to your branding, business cards and email address. 

The professions that employ and inspire designers are extremely wide-ranging. This is because design itself is intertwined with the production, marketing and sales of any given product or service today. You can probably think of many broad categories like graphic design, digital design, architecture and industrial design. Let’s explore some subgenres and check out some great websites created by design experts. 

Graphic Design

This is probably the default category that comes to mind whenever the average person imagines a designer. But graphic design is also one of the deepest and broadest categories of design, including everything from advertising agencies creating corporate brand identities to freelance artists and illustrators providing graphics and drawings. Graphic designers might even specialize in product packaging, print layouts for books and publications, trade show branding or typography. 

Designers understand the value of the digital space, even if they don’t work exclusively in it. Graphic designers can use a .DESIGN domain to leverage their brand identity, stand out from the crowd and carve out their own space online.

Check out this awesome website from the creative studio, This.Design, for an exciting glimpse at the possibilities within brand identity design. 

Digital Design

Digital designers create entire worlds—universes, even—inside their computers. Whether world-building as a video game designer, developing the perfect user flow as a UI or UX designer, modeling real-life spaces in 3D, or just perfecting the web design for a client, designers are working digitally now more than ever. 

Web and UI designer, Philip Ardeljan, created a portfolio at philip.design to showcase his work. Portfolio domains like Philip’s, which pair a first or last name with the design keyword, are especially strong.

Architectural Design

Design in the physical world encompasses every space we inhabit. Architects design our homes, offices and schools. Acoustic designers use physics to perfectly balance the sound inside a concert hall or mitigate sound bleed in mixed-use neighborhoods. Urban planners shape our civic spaces. Interior designers and interior decorators influence how a room makes us feel. Landscape architects design with the materials of the earth itself. 

While architects don’t label themselves as designers in their titles, many of the related fields and specialties do. The use of .DESIGN domains by specialized and full-service firms is widespread and logical. Architect One uses ao.design and sets a particularly strong example. 

Industrial Design

Safety, efficiency and accessibility are integral to industrial design. Industrial designers engineer the tools, fixtures and spaces that help all of us be productive and protected. Furniture designers, automotive designers, lighting designers, product designers and even engineers are all tied to industrial design. We particularly appreciate Marrow and MTC Design and Automotive for their use of the .DESIGN domain to highlight the artistry and design behind their craft.

Lifestyle Design

Our style is a reflection of our individuality, but most of us (knitters aside—looking at you atimetoknit.design!) do not make our clothing or accessories by hand. Instead, we choose from the options created by talented designers who develop unique aesthetics. From fashion design to floral arranging, jewelry design to textiles, these designers use their domain name and web presence to show the skills they’ve developed and the evolution of their practice. Retail stores like CANOE use .DESIGN domains to showcase their products and offer a digital shopping experience. 

Specialized Design 

Many of the most fascinating design niches are highly specialized. Take sound design: imagine how disappointing an action film or video game would be without the thrilling sound effects created by studios like Booster Sound. In the world of film and theater, costume designers bring stories to life in a profound way. Designer Kym Barrett, who worked on Romeo + Juliet, The Matrix, and Charlie’s Angels, created kymbarrett.design to showcase her work and what she’s capable of delivering. And for concerts, festivals, trade shows, and other large-scale events, specialists like durant.design create immersive experiences that wow the audience. 

Get a .DESIGN Domain For Your Business

While there are countless design categories, there is one platform all designers have in common. The Internet is an indispensable tool for designers to showcase their creativity and build connections. That’s why designers’ personal websites are reliably so sophisticated—and why designers are enthusiastic about innovative top-level domains like .DESIGN. 

No matter your design specialty, your work deserves a domain name that is as unique and expressive as you are. Find your domain name to see how it would look with a descriptive top-level domain like .DESIGN or buy it from Hover now (it’s on sale!).