The creativity ranking is compiled by Rating Runeta together with CMS Magazine. It is built on professional awards: the table includes studios that have taken prize places in creativity competitions. This year the leader was Red Collar with a score of 44.89 points. CreativePeople came second with 37.04 points, and AIC+QSOFT third with 26.81 points. Sponge scored 23.32 points, ahead of Vide Infra, which received 16.93 points.
The path from eleventh place to fourth
This is Sponge's best result for the period from 2016 to 2019. In 2016 the studio held eleventh place with 10.93 points. In 2018 it rose to tenth place with 12.25 points and 51 awards. It was 2017 that became the bureau's peak year in the ranking, and its results rested on work that, within a few months, earned recognition on several international platforms at once.
Awwwards remains the main platform for studios that build websites. There a site receives a Site of the Day (SOTD) mark or an Honorable Mention (HM). CSS Winner awards Nominee, Star and SOTD nominations. The CSS Design Awards (CSSDA) hands out Special Kudos prizes, and the BestCSS catalogue also marks the best work with an SOTD. Prizes at each of these venues are counted separately, so a single site can bring a studio several awards at once.
Early 2017 saw BizzGrid and M1 Club Hotel make their mark. On 16 January the BizzGrid site received an Honorable Mention from Awwwards, and the next day, 17 January, it was marked as SOTD on CSS Winner. On 4 February the M1 Club Hotel site received two awards at once: SOTD on CSS Winner and SOTD on BestCSS.
The Pivovarov and Style Whisperer sites
The year's densest stretch came in late August and September. On 23 August the Pivovarov site received SOTD on CSS Winner with a score of 7.6. The next day it became a CSSDA Special Kudos laureate with a score of 7.63. On 25 August the site received two Awwwards awards at once: SOTD and Developer Award, with scores of 7.13 and 7.17 respectively.
The Style Whisperer site also collected several awards in succession. On 13 September it received an Honorable Mention from Awwwards, on 16 September a Star mark on CSS Winner, and on 21 September Special Kudos from CSSDA with a score of 7.63. These awards fell in the same period as the ranking results and secured the studio's place in the top five.
What lies behind the ranking
Sponge's CSS Winner profile lists 21 nominations, 6 Star awards and 9 SOTDs. The studio had also been visible earlier: in 2015 its site took first place in the Digital Agency Website category at Golden Site 2015. In 2016 sites for the studio's clients Furgoneta and Trendon came first in their categories at Golden Site 2016.
The bureau's founder is Bogdan Gnatyuk. His team built its work across several directions at once: client websites, brand design and media projects. The rise in the ranking in 2016 and 2017 coincided with the studio winning awards more often on major international platforms, not only in local competitions.
The peak was followed by a decline. In 2018 Sponge took tenth place, and in 2019 it dropped to 37th place with 4.59 points, losing 27 positions.
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