The Goethe-Institut is a network of German cultural centres abroad that runs educational programmes and a magazine about culture, society and technology. Solyar's column appears on its site in the startups section, but the page does not indicate a publication date. By content, the text belongs to 2015. Importantly, this is an authored piece, not an editorial one: the project head writes in his own voice and recounts his own experience.
A budget of less than a thousand dollars
According to Solyar, less than a thousand dollars went into promoting Looks.fm. The main tools were promoted posts on social media and article marketing. The voice of the ad was radio host Pavel Kozlov, and he worked for free. About forty percent of traffic came from social media, and the newsletter brought back 9.7% of readers, which for an email channel is considered a notable result.
Attention to the project appeared long before the column. Korrespondent blogs wrote about Looks.fm on 13 February and 5 March 2015, meaning the service was already being talked about in the first months after launch. For a startup with almost no money for advertising, such a response matters more than any single campaign: media publications brought people in, and the contests made them come back.
Who was behind the site
Solyar named the creative bureau Sponge digital&design as the developer of Looks.fm. The studio made the service itself, the logo, presentations and the ad for the project. The video "Looks fm" was published on Vimeo on 25 December 2014, before the service began building an audience.
The bureau had already earned notable recognition in the professional community by then. The Awwwards prize, which recognises websites for visual design, usability and technical implementation, awarded the studio an Honorable Mention on 5 December 2013. In February 2014, Splashnology included the bureau's work in a roundup of 30 dark web designs for inspiration. In October 2014, AIN.UA wrote about the studio, calling it an example of dynamic design. In 2014 the bureau submitted seven entries to the 15th Kyiv International Advertising Festival (KIAF) but received no awards.
In the summer of 2015, after Looks.fm had launched, the bureau's work received a series of honours at specialised website competitions. In August, Awwwards selected one of its projects as site of the day, and on 14 August CSSDA awarded a site for the American version a Special Kudos prize. All these distinctions relate to web design, not photo contests, but they show the standing the studio had in the industry.
Solyar singled out the bureau's work in the column itself. He wrote about his colleagues:
"the guys recently launched the best site among all site developers"
This assessment belongs to the head of Looks.fm, not to an independent jury, and on the Goethe-Institut's pages it is presented without explanation of the author's ties to the developer. Later, in early 2016, Solyar was listed as executive director of Sponge D&D in IGate's site roundups. Thus the praise came from a person who was already professionally connected to the bureau.
What happened next
Bohdan Hnatiuk, the founder of Sponge, was one of the creators of Looks.fm, as Korrespondent wrote. Serhiy Semernyov, a designer at the bureau, also took part in creating the service, and in 2018 worked as the studio's art director. In October 2016 the bureau held a seminar, "How to Open Your Own Web Studio," and in 2017, in the Rating Runeta ranking, the studio took fourth place among digital agencies for creativity.
In 2019 the studio placed 37th in the same ranking and received 51 awards, with Bohdan Hnatiuk listed as CEO.
1
