In 2014, KMRF was held for the fifteenth time. The festival evaluates advertising works by category, and one of them, Postcard & Brochure, brings together postcards and brochures—works where composition, typography and the way a layout guides the reader through the pages are essential. Sponge submitted seven entries to the festival. One of them was called Platon Maguta Brochure and belonged to this very category.
The client was the management company Maguta Fund. For it, the studio created not a standalone brochure but a three-part system. The first part was the management company's corporate identity, which sets the visual foundation for all other materials. The second part was the website for UK Maguta Fund. The third, and the main one for the festival entry, was the brochure, described in the studio's materials as animated: it is not a static print layout but a version designed for screen motion.
Jury scores and absence of awards
The entry scored 33 points. The shortlist—the short list of works advancing to the award stage—began at 59 points this year. The work fell short of the threshold, so Sponge received no awards following KMRF-2014. For the studio, this meant that one of seven entries did not make the selected list, and the festival result should be assessed exactly as such, without exaggeration.
The absence of a prize in the category does not negate the work itself. The brochure and website for Maguta Fund remained in the agency's portfolio, and the corporate identity created for the same project shows that the studio worked with the client not through disparate tasks but as a unified system. In 2014, this approach was characteristic of small Ukrainian digital studios, which increasingly offered clients a full cycle rather than a single layout.
The studio in 2014: Behance, Splashnology and Ukrainian competitions
Spring 2014 brought Sponge attention beyond the festival circle. On 9 February, the foreign resource Splashnology, known for its web design selections, published the piece '30 Dark Web Designs for Inspiration', where the studio's works took 23rd place out of 30. The selection was dedicated to dark interfaces, and inclusion meant that the agency's websites were seen by an audience far beyond Ukraine.
Within the country, the studio appeared at Ukrainian Design, one of the main Ukrainian design competitions. In 2014, Sponge received accolades there for the Estetico.me website and the logo for Pervy Gorodskoy. These works belonged to categories other than the brochure for Maguta Fund, but together with the festival entry they show that the agency that year consistently entered public platforms with projects of different genres.
Behance, Adobe's portfolio platform where designers publish works and receive community ratings and curatorial mentions, also became a notable channel. Sponge's Behance profile served as a showcase for animation and motion design. On 20 August 2014, the Alien video appeared there and was featured in the Motion Graphics selection. It was precisely in such a selection that the animation created for the Maguta Fund brochure also appeared, so the Alien video continued the same line of work: motion, typography and a precise rhythm of the frame. Bohdan Hnatiuk, the agency's founder, led the studio through these projects in 2014, and it was this consistency in Sponge's public works that remained its main argument before clients and juries.
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