CSSReel is a web design gallery where works are published with jury and editorial notes. The Portfolio & Companies category brings together sites from studios and agencies showcasing their own projects. In the award description, the platform listed four features of the work: Animation, Fullscreen, Illustration and Video.
The portfolio was also a notable detail. At the time of the award, it contained 389 works, meaning the site housed not a few selected projects but nearly four hundred cases, and the fullscreen presentation allowed them to be shown without the usual page frames.
Two Months, Six Awards
The CSSReel award was another link in a chain that began in late May. On May 24, the site received Website of the Day on CSS Design Awards with a score of 7.80, and on May 29 it was marked as Site of the Day on CSS Nectar. Then came the CSS Light award on June 3 and Site of the Day on CSS Winner on June 13 with a score of 7.5. The sixth in this series was BestCSS, where the site received Site of the Day on July 20, followed by CSSReel.
All these awards are of the same type: platforms select one project of the day from the flow of submitted works and publish it on the homepage. For a studio working with clients, such marks are visible on international platforms where people look for contractors and view examples of work.
The next award was the Awwwards rating. This international platform evaluates sites on design, usability and creativity, and the Site of the Day mark on August 8 with a score of 7.03 became the site's seventh award of the summer, as mentioned in the lead.
Team and Background
In 2015, the bureau was developing under the leadership of founder Bohdan Hnatiuk. In an interview with Innabits in August 2014, Sponge executive director Kirill Solyar spoke about the studio's work, and lead designer Sergey Semernyov was then director and co-owner of SPONGE STORE. Later, as DOU wrote in 2018, he became art director of Sponge D&D.
Attention to the site had been building earlier as well. In December 2013, the previous version of the site received an Awwwards Honorable Mention. On August 21, 2014, DesignWebKit noted the symmetry of the Sponge site's menu, and in October 2014 AIN.UA wrote about the studio's dynamic design. In 2015, the site received a Best of B-1 rating in the UD competition, where another site direction of the bureau was also noted.
What Happened Next
In autumn 2015, the studio's work continued at the Golden Site 2015 competition held in Moscow. On October 22, the Sponge site took first place in the Digital Agency Website nomination, while the financial media site Foundator came second in its category, and Estetico third in the educational and blogger nomination.
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