Top Level Design, LLC’s mission for .art is to create a recognizable, viable, and profitable extension to bring together individuals and companies who are passionate about self-identifying through art. It seems fitting, as ICANN opens up an unprecedented and innovative program to expand how we use and identify with the Internet, that art should be one of the first areas of human culture to be given a dedicated top-level domain.

While art is a universal form of expression, the way in which it manifests, and how an individual or group defines the very concept, is truly unlimited. It is not our goal to define art, to constrain it to a given, professional community, or to make value judgements on what is and is not art and who is and is not an artist. For this reason we believe that .art could never be delegated as a community application, given that no organization could ever truly claim to represent a fixed and clearly delineated art “community.” We at Top Level Design, LLC want to create a space that is equally viable for contemporary, professional artists as it is for historical art collectors, video artists, tattoo artists, gallery owners, sculptors, painters, performance artists, and the expansive group of people and companies that identify in some way with making and appreciating art. An art TLD should be just as open to the traditional shadow puppeteers of Java as it is to the world’s most prestigious galleries.

We believe that by creating a .art extension, we could help promote the global discussion surrounding how art affects all of our lives, and expand the very concept of what art can be and what making art means. To see and come across new forms of art via the Internet will further underscore how the Internet is changing the world and bringing diverse people in contact with one another. It is our goal to continue to help the Internet grow as a revolutionary medium connecting people across space and time, and to simultaneously give art enthusiasts a space within the Internet to further enrich their own lives, their art, and their communities.

The very fact that “art” is such a powerful, three letter word will make it an important TLD. As noted, there is no singular, authoritative definition for what “art” is. It is our goal at Top Level Design, LLC to push TLDs beyond their current role as necessary naming mechanisms into engaging identifiers that comment on how we perceive ourselves and the world around us. We believe that .art will become a model example of how innovative ICANN’s New gTLD Program is and how expansion of the root zone will enrich the Internet and human interaction as a whole.

It is Top Level Design, LLC’s goal to make the .art TLD a viable and profitable business. We believe this to be the most likely scenario, and the projections and financial analysis included in this application demonstrate such. We hope to grow at a rate that allows us to continually improve our registry offerings, increase benefits for both our customers and employees, and develop a foundation or other means of reinvesting in the art sector. We are particularly interested in developing a fund to encourage art education in primary schools around the world. However, our commitments and projections at this time are focused on conservatively estimating our revenue in order to best prepare for a TLD market with the possibility of many more TLDs.