How we work
How our results are selected and ordered
Designcatalogs is a curated professional library, not an index of everything published.
Designcatalogs is published by Designstandard AG, the Swiss company behind it. Where you see both names below, the difference is deliberate: the editorial judgement is Designcatalogs', and the commercial relationship a brand enters is with Designstandard AG, the company.
Brand catalogues, gathered and prepared for people who specify products for a living. We do not try to hold every catalogue in circulation. We hold the ones we judge relevant to architectural practice.
What enters the library
We decide which brands belong here, and that decision is not for sale. It is an editorial judgement about relevance to practice. We carry brands with no commercial relationship with us, and we have declined brands who wanted one.
This is where Designcatalogs differs from Designheroes. On Designheroes, new and currently produced products are published only after an editorially qualified brand enters a commercial relationship. Here there is no such condition. Whether a catalogue is in the library is an editorial decision, and no fee decides it.
Catalogues are obtained, prepared and tagged by our own editorial team. Brands do not upload them. That is why a spread designed as a spread still reads as one.
What partnership changes
Some brands are Designcatalogs partners. Among catalogues that match your search, partner catalogues are ranked higher.
Partnership also affects how thoroughly a catalogue is covered: how deeply products and images are tagged, and whether catalogue pages link out to the brand's own product pages.
What it does not change is what we write. Keywords and framing are developed with brand input. The words are ours, and they are held to our editorial standards. We do not present a brand's marketing copy as our own editorial text.
How search results are ordered
Our search considers the whole catalogue, not just its title: the products, materials, applications and specifications it actually contains. Partner status affects the order in which matching catalogues appear.
Brand comments
Verified brand representatives can comment on the accuracy of their own catalogues — a correction to a specification, a note that a product has been replaced. Those comments come from a verified brand representative rather than from our editorial team, and they are marked that way.
Anyone can report content they consider illegal, with or without an account: report@designstandard.ch.
No personalisation
Results are not ranked according to an individual user's behaviour, profile or search history.
We do not change the order for you personally, and we do not build a profile of you to decide what you should be shown.
If the site does not match this page
Tell us: info@designstandard.ch. This page is what we promise. If the site does something different, that is a mistake in the site, and we will fix it.
Last reviewed: 25th August. Reviewed whenever the ranking or selection model changes.