For Arbitrage Top, the studio produced not a single page but an entire package: website, interfaces, logo and advertising materials. In the agency's work description, the website and interfaces are dated 2013, the advertising materials to 2014, and the logo is part of the same package. This scope made the commission one of the studio's most substantial of those two years.
The Kyiv International Advertising Festival (KIAF) is considered one of Ukraine's main advertising showcases. In 2014, its 15th edition included a Digital & Mobile strand, where digital work is judged. Within it is the G-1 Commercial Websites category, for websites of commercial companies. The entry is listed as “Arbitrage Top website” and submitted in precisely this category.
In the competition results, the project is given a score of 23, with a shortlist threshold of 61 points noted alongside. There are no awards for this project in the festival's public materials, and the agency's work description likewise mentions no prizes. In total, in 2014 the studio submitted seven entries to KIAF, and none received awards.
What was happening at the studio in 2013–2014
Work on Arbitrage Top proceeded against the backdrop of an active public life for the agency. In 2013, Sponge launched a new website with Masonic symbolism, and on 5 December of that year received an Honorable Mention at Awwwards. This is an international platform where websites are judged on visual and technical quality, and for a studio from Ukraine, appearing in its honours was a notable result. In August 2013, the agency set up a profile on Behance, Adobe's portfolio publishing service, and from then on began posting its work there.
On 9 February 2014, the web design blog Splashnology published a roundup titled “30 Dark Web Designs for Inspiration” — thirty examples of websites in a dark aesthetic for inspiration. Sponge appeared on this list at number 23. The dark style was one of the notable web design trends of those years, and inclusion in such a roundup indicated that the studio's work was recognised by the professional community.
In 2014, the studio was also recognised at the Ukrainian Design competition: the Estetico.me website and the logo for “Pershyi Miskyi” were included in its results. In autumn of the same year, the Ukrainian technology publication AIN.UA ran a piece whose headline became a kind of formula for the agency:
“What dynamic design can do: the example of creative agency Sponge”
The piece was published on 17 October 2014, and in timing it coincided with the period when websites and interfaces for clients such as Arbitrage Top were becoming the studio's main line of work.
The team and subsequent projects
The founder of Sponge is named as Bohdan Hnatiuk, who also became one of the creators of Looks.fm. Looks.fm was written about in early 2015 by the blog of the publication Korrespondent: posts appeared on 13 February and 5 March 2015. Around the same time, in February 2015, Forbes wrote about the service in a piece titled “Looks.fm — discovery of 2015”. Thus, in addition to commercial commissions, the agency took part in launching projects that received notable media attention.
The studio's work continued to appear in public roundups. On 8 May 2015, a case study of the agency's new website was published on Behance. From 24 May 2015, Sponge's websites began receiving honours at CSSDA, CSS Nectar, CSS Light, CSS Winner and BestCSS, and on 8 August of that year they appeared in an Awwwards roundup.
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