The creativity and craftsmanship ranking is maintained by the AAC, and points are awarded for work recognised at professional competitions. After Ukrainian Design 2014, the interim table looked like this: Leo Burnett Ukraine had 92 points, Saatchi&Saatchi Ukraine 88, BBDO and Geometry Global shared third and fourth places with 54 points, Banda received 37, TWIGA 20. Sponge entered the list with four points. Creativity Ukraine directly linked the appearance of new names in the ranking to this design competition.
The competition became a notable event of autumn 2014 for the bureau. The studio's work was recognised in two categories at once: the Estetico.me website received Best of B-1, and the logo for Pervy Gorodskoy was marked as Best of C-I-5. In those same days, industry publications wrote about a new wave of dynamic design, and Sponge found itself at the centre of that conversation. In an interview with Innabits, published in August of the same year, the studio's executive director Kyrylo Solyar described the bureau's work as a combination of design, development and marketing, rather than as separate decoration of images.
Interim place and season result
The twelfth place of 2014 remained interim. In the final table of the 2014/2015 season, Sponge was in 21st place, with the same four points. The difference is explained by the fact that the season took into account the results of all festivals, not just Ukrainian Design, and some agencies earned more points during this time. The AAC's final yearbook for 2015 records the bureau's place in exactly this form, so in materials about Sponge it is correct to name both figures with dates: 12th place in October 2014 and 21st place at the end of the season.
The weight of the Ukrainian Design competition in the 2014/2015 season ranking was 1.5, and it was the main source of the studio's points. Without it, the four points with which the bureau entered the table would not have been possible, and the very story of Sponge's appearance in the ranking would have looked different.
Design, digital and awards of 2015
Following the 2015 festivals, Sponge D&D took 16th place in the Design discipline with 14 points and 12th place in the Digital discipline with three points. The studio's website received Best of B-1 at Ukrainian Design 2015, and the KTK logo was marked as Best of C-I-2. In the same season, the bureau's work also reached international platforms dedicated to web design. The studio's website received Site of the Day status on Awwwards on 8 August 2015 with a score of 7.03, and before that it was recognised on CSS Winner, including as Site of the Day on 13 June with a score of 7.5.
Awwwards evaluates websites by design, usability and creativity, and CSS Winner works on a similar principle, and for the studio, appearing there means attention from the professional community outside Ukraine. The bureau's profile on CSS Winner records 21 nominations, 6 Star and 9 Site of the Day, and the profile itself is linked to the studio Sponge Digital & Design.
What happened next
On 22 October 2015, Sponge's website took first place in the Digital Agency Website category at the Golden Site 2015 award, and in the developers' ranking the bureau received 9 points and entered the 17–19 place range. In 2016, the studio continued to perform at competitions: at the end of the AAC 2015/2016 season, it was eighth among digital agencies with 29 points. In the Runet creativity ranking, the bureau took 11th place in 2016, and in 2017 it rose to 4th with 23.32 points. In 2018, it became 10th, and in 2019 it dropped to 37th place. The studio's founder, Bohdan Hnatyuk, was listed as CEO in the Runet ranking profile, and in 2021 the bureau's profile on held second place for Odesa.
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