The paper presents a framework for introducing design patterns that facilitate or improve the techniques used during ontology lifecycle. Some distinctions are drawn between kinds of ontology design patterns. Some contentoriented patterns are presented in order to illustrate their utility at different degrees of abstraction, and how they can be specialized or composed. The proposed framework and the initial set of patterns are designed in order to function as a pipeline connecting domain modelling, user requirements, and ontologydriven tasks/queries to be executed.