The work appears in the portfolio of studio Sponge under the title “Logo and website for the law company White Tetris”, dated 2016. There is no description on the page, but the main point is clear: the client, a law firm, ordered something other than a typical corporate site. The studio created a logo, an interface styled after a video game and a promo video for an unconventional company. For the legal market, where websites are usually strict and look alike, this approach stood out immediately.
What a Behance mark means
Behance is owned by Adobe and serves as a platform where designers and studios upload their projects. The platform's editors select the best works and feature them in themed galleries. The User Interface section is dedicated to how screens, menus and interaction scenarios for a website or app are put together. Being featured there means recognition specifically for interface solutions, not just for the visuals.
On 23 October 2016, the curated mark went to the White Tetris site. The work gathered 1,066 appreciations from platform users, 14,414 views and 74 comments. The number of appreciations was exactly 1,066, not “around a thousand” as some brief summaries sometimes put it.
The 2016 award streak
Before Behance, the site had another mark. On 4 September 2016, CSS Winner named it Site of the Day. CSS Winner selects the best works in web design and awards them daily and permanent marks. Six weeks later the work received gallery recognition from Behance, and in both cases the decisive factor was the presentation: the combination of a law firm and game aesthetics.
The international Awwwards competition proved less favourable. For White Tetris it only reached Nominee status, which does not come with an award. A competition of that level selects works strictly, so the nomination itself is also considered a notable result.
White Tetris was not the studio's only success in 2016. On 4 February, CSS Winner named the Furgoneta site Site of the Day, and on the same day the Korrespondent blog wrote about the works Furgoneta and CSS Light. In March of the same year, Behance featured the Business Logic Group work in the Best of Behance section. In April and July, CSS Winner awarded Site of the Day to the Carts Guru and Trendon store sites, and other marks were also recorded in the studio's CSS Winner profile.
Who is behind the studio
External sources, including CSS Winner, date the founding of Sponge to 2009. CSS Winner itself gives the exact date: 22 November 2009. Before being renamed in 2007, the project existed under the name Layner.
The studio's founder, Bohdan Hnatiuk, is known beyond design as well. He is one of the creators of Looks.fm, a service that Korrespondent wrote about in early 2015. The head and product manager of Looks.fm was Kyrylo Soliar. In IGate's 2016 roundups he is named executive director of Sponge D&D. The studio's team at the time included designer Serhii Semernov and team lead Tymofii Kurshpetov.
The studio worked with both the public and colleagues. On 20 October 2016, Sponge held a seminar titled “How to start your own web studio”, and three days earlier the same seminar was announced in the DOU calendar. A week after the seminar, on 23 October, the Behance mark for White Tetris came through.
On 28 September 2017, the Rating of the Runet for creativity among digital agencies placed Sponge fourth. The rating was reprinted by the business blog on Sostav and by AllAdvertising.
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