CSS Winner is one of the competitive web design platforms where experts evaluate sites and assign them marks of varying levels. The highest is called SOTD (Site of the Day). The next level is the Star, followed by the Nominee. The profile counters show 21 marks in total, 9 SOTD, 6 Star, 6 Nominee, and no SOTD of the Month. The Defence Group project appears in the profile twice, as a Star on 11 August 2016 and as a Nominee on 28 August 2016, so the 21 profile entries correspond to 21 works but not to 21 separate awards.
From the first Site of the Day to the last
The first entry in the profile is the studio's own work, Sponge Digital & Design, with an SOTD mark from 13 June 2015. Next came a promo page for Kvadrat from 19 December 2015, then the Furgoneta site from 4 February 2016. On that same day, as Korrespondent wrote in a blog post about Furgoneta and CSS Light, the site received a mark on CSS Winner. Further down the list are Carts Guru (6 March 2016), the Trendon online store (10 July 2016), White Tetris (4 September 2016), BizzGrid (17 January 2017), and the M1 Club Hotel site (4 February 2017). The last site in this tier, that of artist Artyom Pivovarov, received its mark on 23 August 2017.
Such frequency is explained by the fact that in 2015 the studio was working on several platforms at once. Between 24 May and 14 August 2015, the bureau's sites received marks on CSSDA, CSS Nectar, CSS Light, CSS Winner, BestCSS, CSSReel, and Awwwards, where the mark is dated 8 August 2015. For the American version of the site, One Page Love, BestCSS, and CSSDA recognized it, with a Special Kudos mark appearing on 14 August 2015. The Nominee for Sponge Digital & Design US on CSS Winner is dated 3 August 2015.
The CSS Winner profile covers only a portion of the marks the studio received. In a job posting published on on 6 September 2018, the bureau described itself as follows:
more than 60 awards in two years
Works from 2016 and 2017
In 2016, the profile included Stars for Murka (11 May), Defence Group (11 August), and Simbrella (11 December), as well as a Nominee for Arbeko, which later received a Star on 1 May 2017. Nominations in 2016 and 2017 also went to Lexenger (7 December 2016) and Hijina (14 February 2017). These works show that the bureau continued to produce projects for various clients, from musicians and stores to advertising and service sites.
A special place in 2017 belongs to Artyom Pivovarov's site. The singer was a client of the studio, and the work appeared on several platforms at once. On 23 August 2017, the site received SOTD on CSS Winner, and on 25 August of the same year Awwwards marked it as SOTD and in the Developer category. A piece about the site was published by afisha.tochka.net on 6 October 2017, with the text prepared by the press service.
Studio founder Bogdan Gnatyuk is responsible for the direction that brought the bureau to these platforms. He was also one of the creators of the Looks.fm service, which Korrespondent wrote about in 2015. According to the Runet Rating, in 2019 Gnatyuk was listed as CEO. For several years the studio maintained metrics recorded by industry statistics: on Behance, the spongedigital profile has 41,391 appreciations and 28 curator marks.
The last mark
On 28 September 2017, the same day that the Runet Rating placed Sponge's digital agency creativity in fourth place, the last mark appeared on the CSS Winner profile: the work Helicopter View received a Star. A few days later, the profile stopped receiving new marks from 2017, and the studio's subsequent entries in industry roundups concerned other projects.
1
