About Designstandard
What we are for
Design deserves a standard — a common way to describe objects, so that they can be found, compared and specified wherever the work happens.
That is the whole mission, and it is the name.
Why the standard is the product
Ask a simple question of the design industry and watch it fail.
Which of these chairs meets the fire classification I need for a hotel lobby in Zurich? Who designed this, and is the one I am being offered the original? Which of these fabrics is still available, and in what width?
Nobody can answer at scale, because there is no shared structure. Every manufacturer describes its own products in its own words. Every archive catalogues in its own scheme. Different jurisdictions apply different standards and requirements, and a value that satisfies one requirement may not satisfy another. The information exists — it just does not line up.
So we built the layer that makes it line up: a taxonomy of categories and technical properties, in several languages, which models where a requirement depends on the jurisdiction rather than flattening it into one global answer. That layer is the company. The three products are what it is for.
The three products
Designheroes — a curated reference for authentic design, and a record of who made what. For people who buy it, specify it, collect it, or want to understand it.
Designcatalogs — the brand catalogues, gathered and made searchable by what is inside them. For people who specify products for a living.
Designfinder — project boards where you gather what you have specified and invite the people who need to see it. Open to anyone approved for Designcatalogs, and to the clients and colleagues they invite.
They share one taxonomy. A property means the same thing in all three, which is what lets a designer's name on Designheroes and a fire classification on Designcatalogs be part of the same question.
What we will not do
We do not sell the products we describe. No basket, no commission, no affiliate programme, on any of the three.
We do not sell editorial judgement. On Designheroes a brand cannot buy its way past the editorial criteria; on Designcatalogs a fee does not put a catalogue in the library. Commercial relationships do affect other things, and each product says exactly which on its own results page.
We do not build a profile of you to decide what to show you. There is no personalised ranking on any of the three.
We do not pretend the AI is a person, or that it is always right. Where we use it, we say so, a named human is accountable for editorial work, and technical output carries the warning it deserves.
Who we are
Designstandard AG is a Swiss company, registered in Zurich in June 2023.
It was started by Nils Becker and Susanne Fritz, who are married. Nils spent twenty-five years building digital platforms for the design industry — Stylepark, then Architonic. Susanne is a practising architect, which is why the specification side of this company is built the way a specifier would want it rather than the way a database would suggest.
We are small on purpose. It shows in the products: we would rather hold fewer catalogues and know what is in them than hold everything and know nothing about any of it.
Nils Becker — founder
Susanne Fritz — founder
Julia Lázaro García
Morgana Neves
Our shareholders
Archiproducts S.r.l. holds a minority shareholding in Designstandard, under 30 per cent, and acts as our commercial representative for brand partnerships in the European Union. Archiproducts also operates its own platform, which is separate from ours.
Archiproducts itself is part of the Mondadori Group. That is a strength rather than a caveat: our commercial representative in the European Union has an established media group behind it. We state it plainly all the same, because you should be able to see who holds an interest in an editorial platform and judge it for yourself.
We publish this rather than leaving it to be discovered. The whole argument of this company is that structured, checkable information beats a confident claim, and that has to apply to information about us.
It does not change the editorial rule: eligibility is not for sale, by a partner, by a shareholder, or by anyone.
Where to read the detail
Designheroes — how our results are selected and ordered
Designheroes — how our stories are made