Über Designcatalogs
Wofür wir stehen
Designcatalogs exists so that the work a brand puts into its catalogue reaches the people it was made for and realises its full potential.
That is the whole mission. Everything below is how.
Was ein Katalog tatsächlich ist
Ein Katalog gehört zu den am sorgfältigsten gestalteten Unterlagen, die eine Marke hervorbringt. Er reicht vom ersten Bild bis zur letzten technischen Tabelle: auf der einen Seite Fotografie, Art Direction und die Idee hinter einer Lösung, auf der anderen Abmessungen, Oberflächen, Brandschutzklassifizierungen und Zertifizierungen. Und er ist das Dokument, das ein Vertriebsteam vor einem Kunden präsentiert, wenn es darum geht, ob eine Lösung für ein Projekt passt.
Architects, interior designers, landscape architects and specifiers each need different parts of that document, at different stages, sometimes years apart.
It is a serious investment, and much of it ends up in a PDF that is hard to search and easy to lose. Our job is to put that work back in front of the people it was made for — the inspiration as well as the specification.
Das Problem, von dem wir ausgegangen sind
Manufacturers publish technical information in catalogues, PDFs, microsites, gated libraries and download links. Each is organised in its own way. They were not designed to be searched together, and they are rarely searchable by the thing a specifier actually needs — a fire classification, a fabric rub count, a seat height, or a certification that has to hold in the jurisdiction you are building in.
So a specifier ends up with folders of downloads, a browser full of tabs, and a memory of which brand had the thing. That is the work we are trying to remove.
Was wir tun
We gather the catalogues. Our own editorial team obtains, prepares and tags them — brands do not upload them. That is why a spread designed as a spread still reads as one, and why a table of technical values arrives as values rather than as a picture of a table.
We consider the whole catalogue, not just its title: the products, materials, applications and specifications it contains. That means a catalogue can be found through information buried deep inside it, rather than only through the words on its cover.
We describe products in one structure. A taxonomy of categories and technical properties sits underneath the library, so that "chair" and "Stuhl" and "seating" reach the same place, and so that a property means the same thing whichever brand wrote it.
We distinguish requirements that depend on jurisdiction rather than flattening them into one global answer. A specification that applies in one place may not apply in another, and the structure underneath Designcatalogs is built to preserve that distinction.
Wer ist in der Bibliothek und unter welchen Bedingungen
Any brand we judge relevant to practice. That decision is editorial and it is not for sale. We carry brands with no commercial relationship with us, and we have declined brands who wanted one.
Catalogues are obtained, indexed and tagged by our own editorial team. Brands do not upload them. We do not break catalogues apart or redesign them. We make them findable. That is why a spread designed as a spread still reads as one.
Partners. Some brands are Designcatalogs partners. Partnership affects how deeply a catalogue is tagged, whether its pages link out to the brand's own product pages, and the order in which matching catalogues appear. It does not affect what we write, and no brand's marketing copy is presented as our editorial text.
Wer kann es nutzen
Professionals. Registration is reviewed and approved by a person, and that is not a growth tactic we are apologising for — it is what lets brands release detailed technical material into a room they can see the shape of.
There is no guest phase. If you specify products for a living, the approval takes as long as it takes us to read your registration.
Wer steht dahinter
Designcatalogs ist ein Produkt der Designstandard AG, einem Schweizer Unternehmen mit Sitz in Zürich. Designheroes und Designfinder sind die beiden weiteren Produkte.
Nils Becker — founder
Susanne Fritz — founder
Julia Lázaro García
Morgana Neves
Mehr über das Unternehmen: Über Designstandard
Unsere Aktionäre
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 selbst gehört zur Mondadori-Gruppe. Das sehen wir als Stärke, nicht als Einschränkung: Hinter unserer kommerziellen Vertretung in der Europäischen Union steht eine etablierte Mediengruppe. Wir sagen es trotzdem offen, denn Sie sollen sehen können, wer an einer redaktionellen Plattform beteiligt ist, und sich selbst ein Urteil bilden.
We say so here for the same reason we publish the ranking page: a shareholder who sells our partnerships is a relationship you are entitled to weigh. It does not change the rule above — whether a catalogue is in the library is an editorial decision, and that holds for a partner, a shareholder, or anyone else.
Was wir nicht sind
We are not a shop. Nothing is sold here, there is no basket, and we take no commission on anything you buy from anyone.
We are not a substitute for the manufacturer's current documentation. We are a fast way to find it and to compare across it. Before you specify, order or build, check the source and take professional advice — the technical content here is for orientation.
We are not comprehensive. We hold the catalogues we judge relevant to architectural practice, not every catalogue in circulation.