Rating Runeta regularly compiles rankings in various categories, including a creativity ranking of design studios. For Sponge D&D, it became one of the most notable benchmarks. In 2016, the bureau held 11th place; in 2017, it rose to 4th with 23.32 points; in 2018, it stayed at 10th with 12.25 points. In 2019, the studio landed at 37th place with 4.59 points, thus dropping 27 positions.
The bureau's announcement also mentioned second place in the industry ranking for portal and service design. That result is not reflected in the ranking materials, so it is not cited in this article. The overall creativity ranking remains the most comprehensive measure of how the studio stacks up against other bureaus in the country.
International platforms and statuses
A key resource for web designers in recent years, Awwwards is an international platform where websites are evaluated by experts. The best works receive the Site of the Day status. The bureau's own website received this status on August 8, 2015, with a score of 7.03. Even earlier, on June 13 of the same year, CSS Winner, another international website catalog, recognized it with SOTD status and a score of 7.5.
Sponge D&D's profile on CSS Winner records 21 nominations, 6 stars, and 9 SOTD statuses. The work comes not in episodes but in series. In 2015, the bureau's sites and client projects went through CSS Winner, BestCSS, CSSReel, and Awwwards for several weeks in a row. In 2016, client works Furgoneta, Carts Guru, Trendon, and Defence Group received SOTD statuses or CSS Winner stars, while Awwwards gave honorary mentions to a number of projects.
Golden Website and recent projects
In October 2015, at the Golden Website 2015 awards, the Sponge D&D website took first place in the Digital Agency Website category. Second in financial media was Foundator, a studio work also handled by the bureau's team. The bureau's own website was also recognized in the same year at the UD competition with the Best of B-1 category.
The week of August 23–25, 2017, is particularly telling. The work for the Pivovarov project received SOTD status on CSS Winner on August 23 with a score of 7.6, a special recognition from CSSDA (CSS Design Awards, an international web design competition) the next day with a score of 7.63, and on August 25 two Awwwards honors at once: SOTD status with a score of 7.13 and the Developer Award for development.
The bureau's leadership remained unchanged throughout these years. The studio's founder, Bogdan Gnatyuk, is listed as CEO in the bureau's profile on Rating Runeta, while Kirill Solyar was executive director of Sponge D&D in 2014 and spoke about the studio's work in an interview with Innabits. Sergei Semernyov later became art director, previously lead designer and co-owner of SPONGE STORE.
September 2017 showed that this momentum continued. The work for Style Whisperer received an Awwwards nomination on September 13, a CSS Winner star on September 16, and a CSSDA special recognition with a score of 7.63 on September 21.
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