The Runet Rating compiles its annual creativity ranking of digital agencies using its own methodology. In the 2017 edition, Sponge D&D stood in fourth place with 47 awards. In 2018, the agency rose to tenth place, and the number of awards grew to 51. In the 2019 edition, the figure remained the same—51 awards—but the place dropped to thirty-seventh, with a score of 4.59.
The numbers belong to the rating itself. They do not match what the studio published about itself in other sources, so they should be read as a count by a specific platform, not as the overall tally of the bureau's work.
Where the wins come from
In the breakdown by competition that the rating provides in the Sponge D&D line, the main positions are distributed as follows: CSS Design Awards 16, Behance 16, Awwwards 10, and Zolotoy Sayt 5. CSS Design Awards is an international web design competition where sites receive jury marks and Site of the Day (SOTD) status. Awwwards is one of the most well-known platforms for evaluating websites, which also awards SOTD and honorable mentions. Behance is Adobe's portfolio platform, where works receive audience ratings and curator marks. Zolotoy Sayt is a Russian website competition.
In the 2019 line, the rating also lists Awwwards 2 and Runet Rating 1. It is not clear from the rating itself whether these values refer to 2019 or are a carryover from the previous line, so they are not included in the count.
Behance requires special attention. The rating credits the studio with 16 marks on this platform, whereas the spongedigital profile on Behance shows 28 curator marks. The profile has been open since August 23, 2013, and the marks are spread over several years, so the two figures cannot be compared directly.
The name on the card and the people behind the projects
Bohdan Hnatiuk was the founder of the studio, and his name is linked not only to Sponge. He was one of the creators of Looks.fm, a service covered by the Korrespondent blog in February and March 2015. According to Cyclopedia, the studio changed its name from Layner to Sponge in 2007, and most external sources cite 2009 as the year of its founding.
In the 2019 rating line, Bohdan Hnatiuk is listed as the head. The agency's card on is now titled “Bohdan Hnatiuk's Agency (bohdan.red),” and the studio's award statistics are now published under that name.
The path to awards
The first notable mark in the studio's track record was an Honorable Mention on Awwwards on December 5, 2013. In 2015, the bureau's work regularly appeared in CSS platform selections: CSS Winner, CSSDA, CSS Nectar, and others, and on August 8, 2015, the site received SOTD on Awwwards. On August 14 of the same year, the studio received CSSDA Special Kudos for a site aimed at an American audience. In 2016 and 2017, series of SOTD and Star continued, and Behance curator marks in the UI section went to projects for Business Logic Group and Helicopter View.
External ratings complemented the picture. In 2016, the studio ranked 67th in Tagline's design studio rating, and in 2017, 97th in the same publication's TOP-100 digital production. The studio spoke about the scale of its work itself: in a job posting on dated September 6, 2018, the bureau described itself as:
“more than 60 awards in two years”
This wording comes from the studio's own description in a recruitment ad and relies on a different count than the Runet Rating.
The latest event in the awards history was the renaming of the agency's card on : it now appears in the rating as “Bohdan Hnatiuk's Agency (bohdan.red).”
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