The ad seeking a back-end developer skilled in PHP and Laravel was an ordinary job posting, not a press release. But the studio wrote the text itself, and in it described itself as a digital agency with offices in Odesa, Kyiv, and Baku, “7 years on the market,” more than thirty in-house specialists, and over eighty people in dedicated teams. Seven years, counted back from 2018, leads to 2011, whereas external sources more often cite 2009 as the founding year. Cyclopedia reports that in 2007 the studio changed its name from Layner to Sponge, and CSS Winner gives the exact start date: November 22, 2009.
The key phrase in the ad belongs to the studio itself: “over the past two years our work has received more than 60 awards.” This is self-description, not the result of an independent count, and the difference between the two is noticeable. The Runet Rating, which keeps its own tally of competition wins, counted 51 prizes for the agency. The Awwwards count also diverges: the text states nine awards, while a check of public pages yields different figures. The three Golden Site 2015 statuettes—one of which, according to the agency, recognized it as the best digital agency in the CIS—and both 2016 golds also remain unnamed in open sources.
over the past two years our work has received more than 60 awards
The Road to Awards
The first notable results did not come in 2015. In May 2014 the studio submitted seven entries to the 15th Frontend Development Masters Competition (K M F R) and received no awards. The following year was a turning point: on August 8, 2015, the agency’s website earned Site of the Day at Awwwards, followed by a series of Site of the Day honors and similar awards at CSS Nectar, CSS Winner, CSSDA, BestCSS, and CSSReel. For the US version of the agency’s site, it received a CSSDA Special Kudos award, dated August 14, 2015.
Meanwhile, the studio’s media and Behance profile grew. Bohdan Hnatiuk, founder of Sponge, was involved in the early days of Looks.fm, which Korrespondent wrote about in February and March 2015. In June 2015 the Madonna work appeared on Behance, and in September it was included in Sostav’s “Best Projects of the Summer from Behance” selection. An interview with the agency given to Dark Site of Marketing in July 2015 also came out during this period.
In 2016 the studio’s work continued to gain recognition. The Furgoneta site was named CSS Winner Site of the Day on February 4, and on March 29 Best of Behance highlighted the Business Logic Group project. For 2016, the Runet Rating recognized the studio in the service sector and corporate websites with online stores categories. It was then, according to the agency, that two GoldenSite 2016 golds went to an online store and a restaurant site, where the studio beat McDonald’s site.
A Line in the Rating
In 2017 the studio rose to fourth place in the Runet Rating’s creativity ranking of digital agencies, published on September 28. The website of singer Artem Pyvovarov received CSS Winner Site of the Day on August 23 and Awwwards Site of the Day along with a Developer Award on August 25. At the same time, the studio promoted itself as a mentor: on October 20, 2016, it held a seminar titled “How to Open Your Own Web Studio.”
In 2018 the agency climbed to tenth place in the Runet Rating with 51 prizes. In July, Serhii Semernov, art director of Sponge D&D, gave a master class at the Hillel school. A month later, the studio published the ad with the “more than 60 awards” wording, in which it also mentioned nine Awwwards awards.
In 2019 the studio took thirty-seventh place in the same rating. The number of prizes remained the same, 51, and Bohdan Hnatiuk was listed as CEO.
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