The promotional website for Kvadrat belongs to those studio projects that make it into international galleries on the strength of execution rather than industry popularity. The client operates in construction, where websites are traditionally built to a single template, so the challenge was different: to present the company and its offering in such a way that visitors do not leave after the first screen. Sponge D&D staked on expressive presentation, and professional competitions recognised the result.
What These Awards Mean
The CSS Design Awards is an international web design competition where sites receive scores and awards for visual design and technical execution. Special Kudos is awarded to individual works that stand out from the rest. Sponge D&D's work received it on 21 December 2015 with a score of 7.60 in the Services category. In the competition entry, the project is listed as “Website of the Kvadrat construction company,” that is, the website of a construction company.
Two days earlier, on 19 December, the same promotional site became Site of the Day at CSS Winner. This is one of the web galleries that selects one site daily and showcases it to a broad audience of designers. For the studio, such a mark means attention from the professional community, which regularly reads the selections and follows new work.
The third award came on 21 February 2016, when the site became Site of the Day at CSS Nectar. This gallery also curates selections of the best work, and its mark added another weighty sign to the December recognitions. In two months, the promotional site went from a jury score to two daily selections in different galleries.
Context: The Studio's 2015
For Sponge D&D, 2015 was rich in awards in other competitions as well. The bureau's own website received a Website of the Day mark at the CSS Design Awards in May with a score of 7.80, became Site of the Day at CSS Winner on 13 June, and received Site of the Day at Awwwards on 8 August with a score of 7.03. Awwwards is among the most famous international web design platforms, and making its daily selection is considered a notable achievement. In August, another studio site received Special Kudos at the CSS Design Awards with a score of 7.57, meaning the Kvadrat promotional site was not a one-off success but part of consistent work.
In the autumn, the studio also made its mark in Ukraine. On 22 October 2015, at the Golden Site 2015 awards, the Sponge website took first place in the Digital Agency Website category. This result showed that the bureau's attention to the quality of its own and client websites was sustained across several platforms simultaneously—in international galleries and at a national award.
Why the Construction Theme Is Difficult
Construction companies long designed their websites according to a familiar pattern: a catalogue, a list of services, a gallery of projects, and a phone number in the header. Such a site does its job but rarely makes one want to show it to colleagues or include it in a portfolio. The promotional site for Kvadrat had to be built differently so that it stood out among similar resources. That is why three marks in galleries where sites are selected for expressiveness became a telling result for a theme usually considered difficult for design.
What Happened Next
In late January and February 2016, the galleries' attention shifted to other studio work. On 30 January, the Furgoneta site received an Honorable Mention at Awwwards, on 4 February it became Site of the Day at CSS Winner, and on 7 February it was noted as Site of the Day at CSS Nectar.
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