Terms of Use

1. Who we are, and what these Terms cover

1.1 These Terms of Use are a contract between you and Designstandard AG, Witikonerstrasse 80, 8032 Zurich, Switzerland ("Designstandard", "we", "us"), company number CHE-280.559.568.

1.2 They apply to designheroes.com, designcatalogs.com and designfinder.com (each a "Service"). The Services differ, and where a clause applies to only some of them it says so. Read clause 2 first — it tells you which parts are about you.

1.3 Our Privacy Policy explains what we do with personal data. It is not incorporated into this contract.

1.3a These Terms apply from the moment you use the Services — an account is not required. That includes the three guest AI searches on designheroes available before registration: using the assistant accepts these Terms and forms a contract for the free service, and the disclosure shown before your first search links to them. Registering later does not change that; it adds an account to a relationship that already exists.

1.4 If you use the Services on behalf of an organisation, you confirm you may bind it. Brand partners contract with us separately under the Brand Partner Terms; these Terms do not govern that relationship.

2. The three Services, and who may use them

• designheroes.com — An editorial reference for design products with named authorship.

• Who may use it: Open to anyone, including consumers.

• User content: No content submitted by ordinary users under these Terms is published or shared with other users — no comments, no uploads, no messaging. Private AI queries and conversation history may be stored for the user.

• designcatalogs.com — A curated professional library of brand catalogues and spec sheets.

• Who may use it: Professionals only — registration is reviewed and approved by us.

• User content: Brand-representative comments only (clause 10.5).

• designfinder.com — Invite-based project workspaces.

• Who may use it: Invited participants only.

• User content: Comments, uploaded files and private messages.

2.1 One account gives access to the Services you are eligible for. Access to designcatalogs requires our approval; we may decline or withdraw it, and clause 19 applies when we do.

2.2 You are responsible for your account credentials and for activity under your account. Tell us at info@designstandard.ch if you think someone else has access.

2.3 You may close your account at any time — see clause 19.4.

3. Age

3.1 The Services are not intended for anyone under 13, and are not directed to children. They are professional and reference tools.

3.2 We do not ask for your date of birth or your age, and we do not attempt to verify it. If we learn that someone under 13 is using the Services, we take reasonable steps, including closing any account, and handle the personal data in accordance with our Privacy Policy.

4. What the Services are — and are not

4.1 The Services are information and reference tools. We publish editorial content, brand catalogues, product and specification data, and tools for finding and organising them.

4.2 We sell nothing. No purchase is made on the Services. There is no basket, no payment processing and no consumer transaction. Where you want to buy something, you leave for a third-party site — for example the manufacturer's own site, an authorised retailer, or a gallery or auction house offering a vintage or pre-owned piece. See clause 8.

4.3 We take no commission on anything you buy, wherever you buy it.

4.4 Use of the Services is currently free of charge for individual users. If we introduce paid features we will say so clearly in advance, and nothing you already have will start costing money without your agreement.

5. Accuracy, and what you must not rely on

5.1 We take care with what we publish, but the Services draw on material from many sources — manufacturers' catalogues, spec sheets, archives and galleries — and that material can be incomplete, superseded or wrong at source.

5.2 Technical, regulatory and standards information — including but not limited to ingress protection ratings, fire classifications, referenced standards and jurisdictional code requirements — is provided for orientation only. It may be incomplete, outdated or incorrect, and is not a substitute for expert judgement. Before you specify, order or build, check the manufacturer's current documentation and take professional advice.

5.3 The same applies to attributions, dates, availability, provenance, auction and gallery information, and pricing shown on third-party sites.

5.4 Nothing on the Services is professional advice — not architectural, engineering, regulatory, legal or safety advice. Specification decisions remain yours and your client's.

5.5 If you think something is wrong, tell us at info@designstandard.ch. We would rather hear it than not.

5.6 Archived prices are historical records, not valuations. Where we show a price a piece once sold for, or was once offered at, it is shown as part of the object's history. It is not an estimate, not an appraisal, and not a statement of what the piece is worth now. Prices reached at auction reflect that sale, that room and that day.

5.7 We give no investment advice of any kind, and nothing on the Services is an invitation to treat design objects as an investment.

6. The AI assistant

6.1 You are dealing with a machine. The assistant is an AI system. It tells you so when you first interact with it, and this clause says the same thing.

6.2 What it does. It answers questions about products, materials, specifications and catalogues, and helps you find things across the Services. We are responsible for the assistant as it operates on the Services, notwithstanding that the underlying models are supplied by third parties.

6.3 Its output can be wrong. AI systems produce fluent answers whether or not they are correct. Clause 5 applies to everything the assistant says, in full — particularly to technical, regulatory and standards content, which is where a confident wrong answer costs the most.

6.4 It is not professional advice and must not be used as the sole basis for a specification, a compliance decision or a purchase.

6.5 What you type goes to third parties. Text you enter into search and the assistant is processed by third-party AI providers, and may be processed outside Switzerland — including in the European Union and in the United States — so that we can answer you. Please do not enter confidential information, personal data about other people, or anything you would not want processed by a third party. The Privacy Policy names the providers, states the legal basis and gives retention periods.

6.6 Designstandard does not use what you type to train AI models.

7. Ranking and commercial relationships

7.1 Some brands are partners and pay us. On designheroes, a commercial relationship can influence which products we retrieve and the order in which results appear. On designcatalogs it influences ordering — see 7.2a.

7.2 What payment does and does not decide — designheroes.

Editorial eligibility cannot be purchased. On designheroes, we alone decide which brands qualify for coverage of new and currently produced products, on criteria aimed at products capable of becoming design classics, and no payment affects that assessment. Only brands meeting those criteria may enter our commercial brand programme, and publication of their current products is part of that relationship. Vintage, pre-owned, sold and archived objects are selected separately on editorial grounds and are not subject to the commercial condition that applies to new and currently produced products. Galleries and auction houses do not pay us for inclusion or verification of vintage and pre-owned objects — not a listing fee, not a commission.

7.2a designcatalogs is different. Catalogues are obtained, ingested and laid out by our editorial team, and whether a catalogue is in the library is our decision, not a purchase. Partnership affects depth of coverage and ordering within the library. Do not read the designheroes position in 7.2 across to designcatalogs; the two products work differently.

7.2b The partner module in AI answers. Where an AI answer carries a separately labelled partner list, that module is marked as partner content wherever it appears.

7.3 The full explanation — the ranking parameters and their relative importance — is on the How our results are selected and ordered page for designheroes and designcatalogs, linked from the results. These Terms and that page describe the same model; if they ever differ, that is a defect and we want to know about it.

7.4 We do not rank results on your individual behaviour or on a profile of you. There is no personalised ranking.

8. Links to brands and retailers

8.1 The Services link out to third-party sites: manufacturers' own product pages, authorised retailers, and the galleries and auction houses that hold vintage, pre-owned and archived pieces. Where a product page exists we send you to the manufacturer rather than to a marketplace.

8.2 Some of those pages sell directly; others list authorised retailers. Whether a manufacturer's own page sells directly or instead lists authorised retailers does not affect its ranking, and we take no commission either way.

8.3 When you follow a link you leave our Service, and the destination's own terms and privacy policy apply. We do not control those sites and are not responsible for them, for their content, or for any transaction you enter into there.

9. Your content

9.1 Where this applies. This clause 9 applies to designfinder (comments, uploaded files, private messages) and to designcatalogs (brand-representative comments). It does not apply to designheroes: no content submitted by ordinary users under these Terms is published or shared with other users.

9.2 Your content stays yours. You keep any rights you have in the comments, files and messages you contribute ("Your Content"). A comment you post on designcatalogs as a brand representative is submitted on behalf of the brand, and clause 10.5 explains what follows from that.

9.3 The permission you give us. You grant us, to the extent you have the rights or authority to do so, a non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, store, reproduce, display and transmit Your Content solely to operate the relevant Service and make Your Content available to the audience permitted by that Service — for example, participants in a shared project, or approved designcatalogs users. That is all — the licence exists to make the product work.

9.4 What we will not do with it. We will not publish or share Your Content with other users outside the audience permitted by the Service in which you contributed it, sell it, license it to third parties for their own purposes, use it in advertising, or use it to train AI models. This does not prevent processing by service providers needed to operate the Service, or disclosures required by law or under clause 12.

9.5 Private messages are private. We do not read your private messages except where we must to comply with a legal obligation, or to investigate a report made under clause 12. The messaging service runs on our own infrastructure.

9.6 You are responsible for what you post. You confirm that you have the rights or the authority necessary to contribute Your Content and to permit us to use it as clause 9.3 describes, and that it does not infringe anyone else's rights or break the law.

9.7 When you remove it. Content you are entitled to delete is removed from the Service. Brand-representative comments on designcatalogs are governed by clause 10.5. Where you posted in a shared workspace, clause 15 explains what happens to the workspace itself.

10. Acceptable use

10.1 Do not use the Services to post or share anything unlawful, infringing, defamatory, harassing, deceptive, or that contains malware.

10.2 Do not extract the Services in bulk. Specifically: no automated scraping, crawling or harvesting; no bulk downloading or systematic copying of catalogues, product data or images; no use of undocumented or unauthorised interfaces; and no use of the Services to build a competing database or to train a machine-learning model. Normal reading, searching, and saving what you need for a project is exactly what the Services are for — this clause is about industrial-scale extraction, not about you doing your job.

10.3 Do not attempt to gain unauthorised access, interfere with the Services, or circumvent access controls — including the professional-approval gate on designcatalogs.

10.4 Do not misrepresent who you are, or use another person's account.

10.5 Brand representatives. Comments on designcatalogs are made by authorised representatives of the brand and are attributed to them. If you close your account, or if we are informed or otherwise become aware that you no longer represent the brand, we remove your name and attribute the comment to the brand; the comment itself is not automatically withdrawn. If you no longer represent the brand, you can also tell us directly and we will remove your name.

If you are one, you submit the comment on behalf of the brand. You confirm that you are authorised to submit it and that it is accurate, and clause 9.6 applies to it as it does to anything else you contribute. Closing your account or leaving the brand does not by itself withdraw the comment; whether it continues to be published is governed by the brand's relationship with Designstandard, subject to applicable law.

11. Content moderation — what we restrict, and how

11.1 What we may restrict. We may remove or restrict visibility of content that breaches clause 10, that is unlawful, that infringes a third party's rights, that is factually inaccurate in a way that could mislead specifiers, or that we are required to act on by law or by an order from an authority.

11.2 How decisions are made. Decisions to remove content are taken by a person, not by an automated system. We use no automated content-moderation tools, no automated detection and no automated removal. The volume of content on the Services makes this practical, and we will update this clause if that ever changes.

11.3 The professional gate on designcatalogs is a human review of registrations. It is an access control, not content moderation.

11.4 What we tell you. If we remove your content or restrict your account, we will tell you, and we will tell you why and on what ground — see clause 19.2.

11.5 If you disagree. Reply to us. A person will look at it again. We are a company of two to three people; we do not operate a formal appeals body, and we would rather say so than imply one exists.

12. Reporting illegal content

12.1 Anyone — you do not need an account — may report content on any of the Services that they consider illegal, at report@designstandard.ch or through the reporting control on the page.

12.2 Please include: what the content is and where to find it (a URL if possible), an explanation of why you think it is illegal, your name and email address (not required for reports concerning certain offences against children), and a statement that you believe the report is accurate and complete in good faith.

12.3 We will confirm receipt, decide in a timely, diligent, non-arbitrary and objective manner, and tell you what we decided and why. Where the content was provided by another recipient of the Services, we will tell that recipient as well, and both of you can seek redress through the courts.

12.4 Reports about copyright may also be sent to the same address; there is no separate route and no requirement to use a particular form.

12.5 Serious offences. Where we become aware of information giving rise to a suspicion that a criminal offence involving a threat to the life or safety of a person has taken place, is taking place or is likely to take place, we will inform the law-enforcement or judicial authorities and give them the information we have.

12.6 Private messages are included in 12.1 and 12.5. A participant may report a message inside a conversation. This does not mean we monitor messages — we do not, and clause 9.5 says so. It means that where something is reported to us, or we otherwise become aware of it, the routes in this clause apply to messages as they do to anything else.

13. Contacting us

13.1 You can choose how to reach us. Email info@designstandard.ch, or use the contact form at [contact URL]. Both reach the same people. We answer in English or German.

13.2 You will not be forced through a bot. We may use automated tools to route or acknowledge a message, but we do not rely solely on automated tools to communicate with you — a person reads what you send and a person replies.

13.3 Postal address: Witikonerstrasse 80, 8032 Zurich, Switzerland.

13.4 Our contact point for authorities is published separately, as required, at [authority contact URL].

14. Privacy and your rights over your data

14.1 The Privacy Policy governs personal data. This clause states two things that belong in the contract because they limit what we can promise.

14.2 Deletion. Where the right to erasure applies, we will delete your personal data from our systems — including our databases, our search index, our logs, our backups on their normal cycle, and the vectors we derive from your text.

14.3 One honest limit. Text you enter into the Services, and which we transmit to our AI providers, may remain in their safety and abuse-monitoring systems for a period we do not control, and we cannot reach into those systems to pull it back. The current periods, including one provider's much longer retention for content its automated systems flag, are in the Privacy Policy §4.6. We can stop sending, and we do. We would rather tell you this than promise a deletion we cannot perform.

14.4 Getting a copy. You may ask for a copy of the data you gave us — your account and profile, professional-verification information you provided, your projects, your saved items, files you uploaded, brand enquiries and any comments you submitted, your own assistant messages, your search history and your own chat messages — in a machine-readable format. Data we derived rather than received, and data we keep for security purposes, is not included, and an export will not contain other participants' contributions to a shared workspace.

14.5 Nothing in these Terms limits any right you have under data-protection law.

15. Projects and shared workspaces

15.1 The person who creates a project controls who may see and contribute to it.

15.2 Content you contribute to someone else's project remains visible to that project's participants.

15.3 If a project owner closes their account and other participants remain, ownership transfers to another participant rather than the project being deleted — so that other people's work is not destroyed by someone else's decision. Where the owner was the only participant, the project is deleted with the account.

15.4 We will tell participants when ownership transfers.

16. Availability

16.1 We do not promise that the Services will be available continuously or without interruption. We give no uptime commitment. Maintenance and deployments may make a Service briefly unavailable, sometimes without notice.

16.2 We may change, suspend or discontinue features. Where a change materially reduces what the Services do, we will give reasonable notice under clause 20.

16.3 The Services are provided as they are. This clause does not exclude anything that cannot be excluded by law — see clause 18.

17. Our content, and brands' content

17.1 The Services, our editorial writing, our taxonomy and classifications, our software, design and databases are ours and are protected by intellectual-property law.

17.2 Brand catalogues, product images, specifications and trade marks belong to the brands or to other rights holders. We display them; we do not claim ownership of them.

17.3 You may read and search the material, and save or bookmark it within the Services for your own professional use and for your projects. You may not redistribute it, republish it, or extract it in bulk — see clause 10.2.

17.4 If you are a rights-holder and believe material is published without permission, write to report@designstandard.ch (clause 12) and we will deal with it.

17.5 Historical material. We hold historical material about design objects — product sheets, advertisements, catalogue pages, photographs, auction and gallery records. We do not claim to own it. It is shown so that objects can be identified, documented, and understood in their design-historical context. Where we can identify the maker, the designer or the photographer, we name them.

17.6 If you hold rights in something we show, and you want it attributed differently, corrected, or taken down, tell us at report@designstandard.ch and we will review it promptly. We will not make you litigate to be heard — where we need it, we will ask only for enough information to identify the work and your connection to the rights, not for proof of your case.

17.7 We would rather be corrected than complete. Our records have gaps — pieces whose designer we have not identified, photographs whose author we do not know. If you can tell us who made something, or who photographed it, we want to know. Attribution we have wrong is a worse failure than attribution we are missing.

18. Liability

18.1 We do not exclude or limit liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot be excluded by law. If you are a consumer, nothing in these Terms takes away rights your own country's law gives you.

18.2 Subject to 18.1, we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, or for loss of profit, revenue, business or anticipated savings.

18.3 Subject to 18.1, and given that the Services are provided free of charge to individual users, our total liability to you is limited to CHF 2,000 (two thousand Swiss francs).

18.4 Specification decisions. Clauses 5 and 6 set out what the Services are not. Where you specify, purchase or build on the basis of information found here without independent verification, that decision is yours.

19. Suspension, termination and account closure

19.1 Our grounds. We may suspend or close your account if you breach clause 10, if we are required to by law or by an order from an authority, if your professional-access approval on designcatalogs proves to be unfounded, or if your account presents a security risk.

19.2 We will tell you why. Except where the law prevents it, we will tell you what we have done, the ground we relied on and the specific reason — before or at the time it takes effect. A one-line "terms violation" is not a reason and we will not use one.

19.3 Where a breach can be put right, we will normally ask you to put it right before suspending anything.

19.4 Closing your account yourself. You may close your account at any time from your account settings, or by writing to info@designstandard.ch. We will confirm.

19.5 What happens to your data. On closure we close your account and handle your personal data in accordance with the Privacy Policy, including any post-closure retention periods that apply, and subject to clause 14.3. Projects with other participants transfer rather than being deleted (clause 15.3). Content you posted in shared workspaces may remain visible to those participants where applicable law permits us to keep it, as the Privacy Policy explains; otherwise we remove or anonymise the personal data in it.

19.6 Dormant accounts. If you do not use your account for 36 months, we will email you at least 30 days before deleting it, so you can keep it by signing in.

19.7 Clauses 5, 6.3, 9.2 to 9.6 and 10.5 (for as long as the relevant content remains in the Services), 14, 17, 18 and 20 to 22 survive.

20. Changes to these Terms

20.1 We may change these Terms. We will not make retroactive changes.

20.2 For any change that materially affects your rights or what you can do, we will give at least 15 days' notice before it takes effect and say what changed. If you have an account, we notify you by email. If you use the Services without one, we display the notice prominently in the Service before you continue.

Minor corrections we will publish with a new version number and date.

20.3 If you do not accept a change, you may stop using the Services, or close your account if you have one, before it takes effect. Continuing to use the Services after that date means you accept the change — which is why the notice tells you plainly what changed rather than pointing you at a diff.

20.4 Superseded versions stay available at [terms archive URL] so you can see what each version said and when it applied.

21. Governing law and jurisdiction

21.1 Governing law. These Terms are governed by Swiss law, excluding its conflict-of-laws rules.

21.2 Consumer protection is not displaced. If you are a consumer habitually resident in the European Union or the EEA, clause 21.1 does not deprive you of the protection of any provision of the law of your own country that cannot be departed from by agreement. Where those provisions give you more, they apply.

21.3 Where you can sue us, and where we can sue you. If you are a consumer habitually resident in the EU or EEA, you may bring proceedings against us in the courts of your own country of residence, and we will bring any proceedings against you only in the courts of your country of residence. You may also sue us in Zurich if you prefer.

21.4 Business users. If you use the Services in the course of your trade or profession and are not a consumer, the courts of Zurich have exclusive jurisdiction.

21.5 Nothing in this clause affects any mandatory right of redress, or your right to complain to a supervisory or consumer authority in your own country.

22. General

22.1 Severability. If any provision is invalid or unenforceable, that provision alone is affected; the rest stays in force so far as it can be separated from it.

22.2 No waiver. If we do not enforce something immediately, we have not given up the right to enforce it later.

22.3 Notices. If you have an account, we contact you at the email address on it; keep it current. If you do not, we give notice in the Service itself. You contact us at info@designstandard.ch.

22.4 Assignment. You may not transfer your rights under these Terms. We may transfer ours to a group company or on a sale of the business, and will tell you if we do.

22.5 Entire agreement. These Terms are the whole agreement between us about the Services. Our Privacy Policy separately explains how we process personal data. This does not exclude liability for anything we have told you dishonestly.

22.6 Language. These Terms are published in English.