Looks.fm was a project that quickly outgrew the narrow circle of designers and developers. The photo contest service was created by a team that included Bohdan Hnatiuk, founder of the Sponge studio. The platform was developed by the Sponge digital&design bureau, with Kirill Solyar as the project lead and product manager. Among the creators of the service is also named Sergey Semernyov, who later worked as art director at Sponge D&D.
The main argument in favor of the project was the statistics cited by Forbes. According to the magazine, in six months Looks.fm gathered 750,000 unique visitors and 13 million views. At the same time, less than a thousand dollars was spent on promotion. For a market where many startups burn budgets on advertising, such a proportion looked rare, and it was precisely this, judging by the publications, that became the main basis for the magazine's selection.
Korrespondent journalists also took notice of the service. In the publication's blog on February 13, 2015, a note about Looks.fm appeared, and on March 5, Korrespondent returned to the topic and quoted Forbes' assessment:
Forbes magazine named the Looks.fm project the discovery of 2015.
The headline of the Forbes piece itself read: "Looks.fm — discovery of 2015." The wording, like many assessments in the business press, relied on growth indicators rather than expert discussion of design or technology.
The bureau before Looks.fm
Looks.fm did not appear out of nowhere. By early 2015, Sponge already had a notable track record in international competitions and professional selections. In December 2013, the bureau's work received an Honorable Mention at Awwwards, one of the main platforms for evaluating web design. The scores at Awwwards are given by a jury and the community, and "Honorable Mention" denotes a mark that is below a win but above a regular showing.
In February 2014, the portal Splashnology published a selection "30 Dark Web Designs for Inspiration," where Sponge took 23rd place out of 30. The theme of the selection was narrow: dark interfaces and bold color solutions that designers were actively discussing at the time. In 2014, the studio also participated in Ukrainian Design: the Estetico.me website and the logo for "Pervy Gorodskoy" were included in the list of works recognized by this professional award.
In autumn 2014, the Ukrainian publication AIN.UA published a piece "What Dynamic Design Can Do: the Example of Creative Bureau Sponge." For the studio, this was one of the few texts that dealt not with a specific commission but with an approach to work. Even earlier, in May 2014, the bureau submitted seven entries to the 15th KMRF, an international advertising festival, and in the same year a motion project Alien appeared on Behance, noted in the Motion Graphics Served section.
What came after
In spring and summer 2015, the bureau's works regularly appeared on web design aggregator sites. A website created for an American audience received a special CSSDA Special Kudos award on August 14, 2015. The work on Behance with the Madonna project was published on June 30, 2015, and on September 21, Sostav included it in the selection "Best Projects of the Summer from Behance" in the motion design category.
By mid-2017, the studio's profile on CSS Winner counted 21 works: 9 SOTD marks, i.e., "site of the day," 6 Star marks, and 6 nominations. Another indicator was the studio's professional recognition in ratings. In the 2017 Runet Rating, the bureau took fourth place in the digital agency creativity nomination; in 2018 it rose to tenth place and received 51 awards.
In 2019, the studio took 37th place in the same rating with 51 awards, and Bohdan Hnatiuk was listed in the CEO line.
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