CSS Light is a web design gallery where studios submit their sites and the editorial team selects the best. Featured of the Day status means the resource was included in the daily selection and, for 24 hours, became a benchmark for others. For a bureau working with clients beyond Ukraine, such a showcase matters: the site is seen in the context of curated works, not among hundreds of similar ones.
The significance of the accolade is further underscored by the fact that it did not come alone. On 24 May, the site received WOTD on CSS Design Awards with a score of 7.80; on 29 May, it became SOTD on CSS Nectar. Then, on 3 June, CSS Light followed. Three international marks in ten days mean the work was noticed by several independent platforms at once, not just one editorial team.
Three categories and 372 works
The CSS Light editors placed the site in three categories at once: 'Companies', 'Marketing', and 'Portfolio'. Such a set shows that the platform evaluated the site not as a single page with successful animation, but as a holistic showcase of the studio. The description separately notes the number of works: 372 projects in the portfolio. For a design bureau, this is an important detail, because the volume of completed orders is usually harder to fake than a visual effect on the homepage.
On the platform, the studio is listed as Sponge Digital and Design by Sponge D&D from Ukraine. It was under this name that the bureau's work was reviewed both in international galleries and in Ukrainian publications. Back in 2014, AIN.UA wrote about the bureau's dynamic design, and the site Estetico.me, created in the same circles, received the Best of B-1 mark at the UD awards that year. The Ukrainian design community in those years closely followed what local studios were doing on the web.
People and history of the bureau
The founder of the bureau remains Bohdan Hnatiuk. In his Rating Runeta profile, he is listed as CEO, and later his name is also associated with the Workspace service. It was he who determined how the studio builds relationships with international platforms that evaluate sites on design, layout, and usability.
In August 2014, in an interview with Innabits, Sponge's executive director Kirill Solyar spoke about the studio's work, and later appeared at Design.Lab. Lead designer Sergey Semernyov, who in 2014 was director and co-owner of SPONGE STORE, subsequently became art director of Sponge D&D. The changing roles within the team accompanied the studio's growth in 2015, when its site began to regularly appear on lists of the best.
What happened next
The 2015 season continued rapidly. On 13 June, the site received SOTD on CSS Winner with a score of 7.5; on 20 July, it became SOTD on BestCSS; on 27 July, it won the Winner nomination on CSSReel. On 8 August, Awwwards marked it as Site of the Day with a score of 7.03. Awwwards is considered one of the most prominent international platforms for evaluating websites, and being included in its daily selection is regarded as a sign of recognition from the professional community.
Within Ukraine, the work also received recognition. The bureau's site was included in UD 2015 with the Best of B-1 mark, and the logo of one of the studio's regional projects entered the Best of C-I-2 category of the same competition. Thus, in a single year, the bureau's work gained recognition on both the international and local scenes.
The season culminated in the 'Golden Site 2015' award. On 22 October 2015, the Sponge site took first place in the 'Digital Agency Website' nomination, ahead of the other participants in the category.
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