Ukrainian Design: The Very Best Of is a Ukrainian design competition in which works are compared within categories, and the best are awarded the Best of mark. The studio Sponge, whose founder remains Bohdan Hnatiuk, appeared on these lists regularly, and its name became one of the most prominent in the website category. External sources date the bureau's founding to 2009, and in 2007, according to Cyclopedia, the studio under its previous name changed its sign to Sponge.
2013 and 2014: Websites and a TV Channel
The first confirmed award dates to 2013. The Chkalov School website received Best of in the "Website Design" category under entry B-1-13, whose author in the competition is listed as "Sponge Digital&Design." The work description states that the "Chkalov Foreign Language Courses" trace their history to 1925. In the same year, the bureau's website received an Honorable Mention at Awwwards, an international platform where a jury evaluates websites and issues marks of various levels.
In 2014, the competition recognized two projects. The Estetico.me magazine website received Best of in the same category under entry B-1-25, and the logo for the TV channel "First City" became Best of in the "TV Channel Logo" category. The competition description calls the logo "geometrically precise and scalable." Also then, on 09.02.2014, the Sponge website placed 23rd out of 30 in Splashnology's "30 Dark Web Designs for Inspiration" selection. In May, the studio submitted seven entries to the 15th Kazakhstan International Advertising Festival but received no awards.
2015 and 2016: Five Awards According to the Studio
It is in 2015 and 2016 that the five awards the studio lists in its own record fall: the Madonna animation, the Sponge D&D website, the KTK TV channel logo, the Geeks Empire TV ident, and the Trendon online store. Madonna is indeed notable in open sources. On 30.06.2015 the project was published on Behance, the portfolio platform owned by Adobe, and on 21.09.2015 Sostav magazine included it in its "Best Projects of the Summer from Behance" selection in the motion design section. However, the claim of the competition's highest level for this work is not confirmed by a primary source, so it is not repeated in this text. The other four works also rest on the studio's word rather than on the competition's pages.
Separately, Trendon's success on another platform is confirmed. On 10.07.2016 the store received a SOTD mark on CSS Winner, a site where web projects are evaluated with "Site of the Day" marks. This fact does not relate to the Ukrainian Design competition but shows that the studio worked with online stores and received recognition for their development.
What Was Happening in Parallel
While the studio was collecting competition marks, its online activity was noticeable even without them. In 2015, the bureau's Behance profile received constant acclaim, and 28 curator marks on the platform cover works from 2014 to 2018. Bohdan Hnatiuk himself was one of the creators of the Looks.fm service, which Korrespondent wrote about in February and March 2015. In January–March 2016, Kyrylo Soliar, named executive director of Sponge D&D in IGate selections, represented the bureau in industry materials.
The studio also describes its own results, but the figures in its own texts do not match. In a job posting on dated 06.09.2018, Sponge wrote of "more than 60 awards in two years." This is self-description, and it has no competition confirmation. Industry rankings, meanwhile, give a stricter picture: in the Rating of Runet's digital agency creativity ranking for 2017, the studio took fourth place; in 2018 it rose to tenth with 51 prizes; and in 2019, when Bohdan Hnatiuk is listed as CEO, it found itself in 37th place with the same 51 prizes.
1
