Designers use Behance, the portfolio platform run by Adobe, to show their work to a wide audience. Viewers give appreciations, write comments, and the platform's editors sometimes single out projects with curated tags. The bureau's case was published on 8 May 2015, and the studio described it in one short phrase. The original description reads:
“Interactive presentation of the company Sponge D & D and 400 jobs in the portfolio”
The case gathered 2,056 appreciations, over 17,000 views and 184 comments. Behance appreciations work like likes, but only those who open the work can give them. This case has no curated tag, meaning the platform did not select it for its collections. Yet the site itself, as the following year showed, proved more noticeable than the publication.
Summer accolades
From 24 May to 14 August 2015, the site received Site of the Day accolades on seven platforms: CSS Design Awards, CSS Nectar, CSS Light, CSS Winner, BestCSS, CSSReel and Awwwards, where the accolade is dated 8 August. Site of the Day means a daily accolade for the best site of the day, and appearing on such a list is noticeable to clients and colleagues who look for contractors by ready examples. Awwwards is among the most famous web design ratings, so an accolade there is considered one of the most weighty. The American version of the site earned separate accolades: One Page Love, BestCSS and CSSDA Special Kudos, the latter awarded on 14 August 2015 with a score of 7.57.
The summer accolades were not the first sign of attention to the bureau. On 5 December 2013, the studio's site of that period, styled with Masonic symbolism, received an Honorable Mention on Awwwards. On 9 February 2014, Splashnology included the bureau's work in its roundup “30 Dark Web Designs for Inspiration,” where the studio stood 23rd out of 30. There were no awards that year, but in late May 2014 the studio submitted seven entries to the 15th Kyiv International Advertising Festival (KIAF). The entries were scored, but the bureau received no prizes.
What was happening alongside
In spring 2015 the bureau was not only working on its website. Korrespondent's blogs on 13 February and 5 March 2015 told of Looks.fm, a service co-created by Bohdan Hnatiuk, Sponge's founder, Kyrylo Soliar, the project's head and product manager, and designer Serhii Semernov. Soliar also wrote a column for the Goethe-Institut magazine, and in 2015 it appeared in print. For Sponge this was an important time: the studio acted simultaneously as a product team and as a contractor for clients.
The bureau's work also made it into Behance's own roundups. On 30 June 2015 the studio published a video with Madonna on Behance, and on 21 September that same year Sostav included it in its “Best Projects of the Summer from Behance” review in the motion design section. Thus the same studio gained attention in both web design and animation, and its website became the main proof of the breadth of its expertise.
What came next
The accolades continued after summer 2015. On 4 February 2016 Korrespondent published a blog about the Furgoneta website and its CSS Light accolade, and on the same day CSS Winner chose that project as Site of the Day. On 29 March 2016 Behance included Business Logic Group's work in its Best of Behance roundup. In October 2016 the bureau announced a seminar, “How to Open Your Own Web Studio,” information about which appeared in the DOU calendar. On 20 October 2016 the seminar was scheduled for that date, and it became the studio's next public step after its 2015 work.
1
