The Webby Awards is the internet’s most respected symbol of success, attracting over 13,000 entries from 70 countries worldwide. With an esteemed jury and over two million votes cast by more than 600,000 people in the Webby People’s Voice, work by DEPT®, BASIC/DEPT®, HELLO MONDAY/DEPT® and DOGSTUDIO/DEPT® has been selected as the best in its category, reinforcing our position as a leading agency that’s setting the standard for tech and marketing.

“Winning Agency and Network of the Year for the third time straight was something I never even dreamed of when we started DEPT®,” says Dimi Albers, CEO of DEPT®. “I really want to give a big shoutout to our awesome clients, our hard working teams, the jury, and everyone who voted. Your support means everything to us. We’re pumped to keep pioneering tech and marketing, especially with our AI and impactful projects. Thanks so much, everyone!”

Daniel’s Music Foundation: Raising the bar for accessible design
BASIC/DEPT®
People’s Voice: Accessible Technology 

Daniel’s Music Foundation is a nonprofit empowering people with disabilities through music and Disability Awareness programs that has been changing lives in NYC for almost 20 years.

They needed a website that could keep up, so they came to us for a new one that would build trust, share joy, showcase impact, and also be accessible to people of all abilities. We raised the bar of excellence in accessible design; rather than modifying an experience for a few, it’s about finding ways to translate it for everyone to equally join the fun.

GiveAHand
HELLO MONDAY/DEPT®
People’s Voice: Responsible AI

Following on from Hello Monday/DEPT®’s multi-award winning approach to teaching the American sign language alphabet, Fingerspelling, we launched GiveAHand.ai – the world’s largest open-source image library of hands fully tagged with data to help build better hand models.

One hundred percent crowdsourced, the data collected in the platform will generate a diverse dataset of hands, building an image library that will help unlock sign language. Researchers can then download and use these fully tagged images to improve their machine learning models, truly allowing the detection and translation of the full spectrum of Sign Language.

Google Store: Bringing the best of Google to people worldwide
BASIC/DEPT®
People’s Voice: Best Practices

Our collaboration with the Google Hardware team has helped turn store.google.com into a world-class brand and e-commerce destination.We’ve contributed end-to-end services, ranging from eCommerce strategy and experience design to art direction, content creation, and campaign development.


Google Jigsaw
HELLO MONDAY/DEPT®
Webby Winner: Corporate Social Responsibility

Jigsaw is a unit within Google that researches threats to open societies, and builds technology, products and tangible methods that inspire scalable solutions. Info Interventions is a collection of four of these experiments specifically created to help people build information resilience at critical moments in their online journey.

Together, our campaign reached 3.5M users of our target audience, while helping to drive efficient awareness and traffic to this important initiative.


Gucci – Ancora Fashion Show 2024
BASIC/DEPT®
Webby Winner: Best Mobile User Interface
People’s Voice: Best Mobile Visual Design – Function

In preparation for Milan Fashion Week, The House of Gucci trusted us to collaborate on bringing the digital world of Gucci Ancora to life.  We created a digital platform that embodied Gucci Ancora’s premium visual language, while pushing innovation for delivering live content across 15 different languages. Our immersive experience meant that as soon as looks walked down the runway, they were quickly and seamlessly translated to the fullscreen experience of the site, meaning that guests all over the world could step into the show in real time.


Gucci
BASIC/DEPT®
People’s Voice: Best Visual Design – Function

We created a stunning branded commerce website for Gucci that encapsulates the luxury of this iconic brand.


Philips: One of a kind
DEPT®
People’s Voice: Best Community Engagement

The campaign we launched for the Philips OneBlade revolutionized customer engagement. Harnessing real, passionate user reviews, we transformed them into humorous, relatable films that playfully caricatured each review. This approach created a surreal yet human connection, sparking a cycle of new reviews and TikTok recreations. It proved to be a successful exercise in community engagement and creative storytelling.

Reddit: r/Place
DEPT®
People’s Voice: Arts, Culture & Lifestyle

We worked with Reddit to revive its 2017 experiment, r/Place, which saw users working together to create a digital art piece. With custom videos, time lapses, global leaderboards, and collaborations with Twitch streamers, the r/Place social content drove 218M organic impressions/views and during the week following r/Place), our social channels gained +270K followers and 56k mentions.


Jeff Koons Moonphase: Tailoring a celestial site for a lunar gallery
BASIC/DEPT®
People’s Voice: NetArt 
People’s Voice: Best User Interface

We worked with Pace Gallery’s Web3 innovation hub, Pace Verso, to design and build a digital experience for iconic American artist Jeff Koons’ first-ever foray into the NFT space. Inspired by the moon, Koons created “Moon Phases” –  a collection of sculptures and NFTs celebrating human achievement both past and present.

The project invites viewers to reflect on their place in space, with 125 sculptures inspired by influential historical figures sent—literally— to the moon via a partnership with SpaceX, while 125 corresponding replicas are available for purchase here on planet earth, each with their own NFT counterpart for art collectors to enjoy. We brought this out-of-this-world exhibit into the homes of people around the world, and easily communicated its highly complex concepts in ways that made it relatable to every visitor.

Sesame Workshop: Growing as we grieve
HELLO MONDAY/DEPT®
People’s Voice: Health & Wellness

The Growing as we Grieve platform is a beautiful interactive experience for parents and caregivers to reflect on their own experience of grief and hear what has helped other families cope, thrive, and find joy.


Trainline: A rallying cry to use railways
DEPT®
People’s Voice: Sustainability & Environment

Trainline is Europe’s leading train and coach app. With a purpose for helping people make more environmentally friendly travel choices, the brand enlisted DEPT® to spread the word of its ‘I came by train’ campaign across paid social channels, inspiring people to help fight climate change and lower their carbon footprint by opting to travel by trains over cars and planes.


Undo the Firewall
HELLO MONDAY/DEPT®
People’s Voice: Responsible Innovation

Undo the Firewall is a grassroots initiative between The True Story and Hello Monday/DEPT® designed to counter internet censorship. By leveraging tech for good, we’ve created a straightforward solution to empower website owners globally to actively contribute to the fight against censorship and misinformation by hosting uncensored news stories to deliver the real stories.

DEPT® – Prepare to Pioneer
DOGSTUDIO/DEPT®
People’s Voice: Best Art Direction

‘Prepare to Pioneer’ is an AI-fueled wayfinder experience created by DOGSTUDIO/DEPT®, which encourages users to discover their Pioneering profile. Through a take on the well-known mechanics of fortune-telling, it takes users on a journey that offers a very unique twist on the traditional process of content curation, combining it with an innovative storytelling experience. Try it for yourself. 


Virgin Galactic: Bringing users closer to space
DOGSTUDIO/DEPT®
Webby Winner & People’s Voice: Travel & Lifestyle

On a mission to accelerate the future of transportation and define the next generation of space travel, we worked with Virgin Galactic to launch its new commercial spaceflight website to connect all those who are curious about space travel. We created an immersive website experience to communicate the excitement of space travel that is truly out of this world…

In addition to the award wins, projects for the following clients were awarded as Nominees or Honorees: Design Within Reach; Doordash; eBay; GANNI; Just Eat; KFC; Louis Poulsen; Meebits; Patagonia; ReflexAI; Tempoo; Tony Blair Institute; Webex; Whoop.

Congratulations to our talented teams and pioneering clients for this incredible achievement, and thank you for voting!

Competing against 13,000 entries from more than 70 countries worldwide, our nominated projects are eligible to win two awards: a Webby Award as chosen by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences (IADA) jury in each category, and a Webby People’s Voice chosen by the online public. 

Nominations for DEPT®, BASIC/DEPT®, Hello Monday/DEPT®, and Dogstudio/DEPT® span Advertising, Media & PR, AI, Metaverse & Virtual and Websites and Mobile Sites.

Shortlisted projects include two nominations for Responsible AI awards for our work with GiveAHand and ReflexAI, and multiple awards for impact projects including Trainline’s ‘I came by train’ campaign that inspires people to help fight climate change, Undo The Firewall –  a project to help combat misinformation and censorship, and Google Jigsaw which researches threats to open societies, and builds technology, products and tangible methods that inspire scalable solutions.

Huge congratulations to all of our nominated clients: American Society for Deaf Children; Bang & Olufsen; Cowboy; Daniel’s Music Foundation; GiveAHand; Google; Gucci; Jeff Koons; Philips; Reddit; ReflexAI; Sesame Workshop; Tony Blair Institute; Trainline; Undo the Firewall; Virgin Galactic; Whoop. 

The public voting declared these following projects by DEPT®, BASIC/DEPT®, HELLO MONDAY/DEPT®, DOGSTUDIO/DEPT® and STUDIO DUMBAR/DEPT® the winners of the People’s Voice awards:

• The unique Web3 experience we created for fashion brand H&Mbeyond, which turned their showroom into an immersive, virtual experience, won for Metaverse, Immersive & Virtual – General Virtual Experiences: Arts, Fashion, Retail & Culture.
• BASIC/DEPT®’s website created for Cowboy, the connected electric bike, won four awards for Best Visual Design: Function, Best User Interface, Best Mobile Visual Design: Aesthetic, and Best Mobile User Interface.
• The website for the first NFT project by artist Jeff Koons won Websites and Mobile Sites – Features & Design: Best Homepage.
• The project for Google ChromeOS won General Websites and Mobile Sites: Web Services & Applications, and the work for Google Store won Best User Experience: Websites and Mobile Sites
• Crafted, the community initiative led by BASIC/DEPT® that brings together local creators and tastemakers, won General Websites and Mobile Sites: Diversity, Equity & Inclusion.
• JAMS – BASIC/DEPT®’s social experiment that connects people with curated playlists won Websites and Mobile Sites – Features & Design: Technical Achievement.
• The Patagonia Footprints Chronicles site won General Websites and Mobile Sites: Sustainability & Environment.
• The app for KFC won General Apps: Food & Drink.
• Webex won Websites and Mobile Sites: Best Navigation/Structure.
• For HELLO MONDAY/DEPT®, Fingerspelling with Machine Learning won three awards  in the Games category for Family, Kids & Education, and Social Impact, and in the Responsible Technology category for Accessible Technology.
• The site built to build anticipation for Digital Insight Games’ launch of Cloud Castles won two awards for Websites and Mobile Sites – Features & Design: Technical Achievement, and General Metaverse Experiences: Games.
• Demo Festival – the world’s largest festival of motion design –  organized by STUDIO DUMBAR/DEPT® won General Websites and Mobile Sites: Events.
• DEPT®’s very own Meta Festival – the first 24hr event in the Metaverse – won Metaverse & Immersive Features: Best Community Engagement, and Metaverse, Immersive & Virtual – Virtual Video Features: Best Festival or Conference.

The unique Web3 experience we created for fashion brand H&Mbeyond which turned their showroom into an immersive, virtual experience, is up for Metaverse, Immersive & Virtual – General Virtual Experiences: Arts, Fashion, Retail & Culture.

The fresh strategy, design and development of Inter Milan’s new app and website is nominated for Websites and Mobile Sites – General Websites and Mobile Sites: Sports. HYPEWEAR by ABOUT YOU, the first online shop for digital NFT fashion, is nominated for App Features: Best Use of Web3 Technology.

BASIC/DEPT® have achieved a record number of nominations this year. The website created for Cowboy, the connected electric bike, is nominated for four awards for Best Visual Design: Function, Best User Interface, Best Mobile Visual Design: Aesthetic, and Best Mobile User Interface.

The website for the first NFT project by artist Jeff Koons is up for Websites and Mobile Sites – Features & Design: Best Homepage. 

The project for Google ChromeOS is nominated for General Websites and Mobile Sites: Web Services & Applications, and Best Mobile Visual Design: Function.

Crafted, the community initiative led by BASIC/DEPT® that brings together local creators and tastemakers, is nominated twice for General Websites and Mobile Sites: Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, and Features & Design: Best Practices.

JAMS – BASIC/DEPT®’s social experiment that connects people with curated playlists – is nominated for Websites and Mobile Sites – Features & Design: Technical Achievement.

The work for Google Store is nominated for Websites and Mobile Sites – Features & Design: Best User Experience, and Best Mobile User Experience.

For Patagonia’s website, BASIC/DEPT® is nominated for General Websites and Mobile Sites: Fashion & Beauty, and Features & Design: Best Practices. The Patagonia Footprints Chronicles site is nominated for General Websites and Mobile Sites: Sustainability & Environment, and Corporate Social Responsibility.

The app for KFC is nominated for General Apps: Food & Drink. The site for Webex is nominated in the Websites and Mobile Sites category for Corporate Communications, and Best Navigation/Structure. 

For HELLO MONDAY/DEPT®, Fingerspelling with Machine Learning is nominated three times in the Games category for Family, Kids & Education, Social Impact, and Technical Achievement, and in the Responsible Technology category for Accessible Technology.

The immersive website experience for Virgin Galactic that communicates the excitement of space travel, is nominated in General Websites and Mobile Sites – Travel & Lifestyle.

The experience built together with DOGSTUDIO/DEPT® to build anticipation for Digital Insight Games’ launch of Cloud Castles is nominated for Websites and Mobile Sites – Features & Design: Technical Achievement, and General Metaverse Experiences: Games.

Demo Festival – the world’s largest festival of motion design –  organised by STUDIO DUMBAR/DEPT® is nominated for General Websites and Mobile Sites: Events.

Last but definitely not least, DEPT®’s very own Meta Festival – the first 24hr event in the Metaverse – which attracted 12,000 registrations from 109 countries, is nominated for Metaverse & Immersive Features: Best Community Engagement, and Metaverse, Immersive & Virtual – Virtual Video Features: Best Festival or Conference.

In addition to the 32 nominations, 20 projects for the following clients were awarded Honorees: Lululemon Studio, Design Within Reach, Google Store, Jeff Koons, KFC , VIZIO, eBay, Adobe, HAPE, Meebits, Panasonic, Sprite, DIG: Cloud Castles.

Kudos to our talented teams and awesome clients for this incredible achievement, and thank you for voting!

DEPT®, BASIC/DEPT®, and Hello Monday are today celebrating a record year of Webby wins after scooping up 16 awards, 23 nominations and 24 honorees, and also being crowned Network of the Year 2022.

With over 14,000 projects from 70 countries and nearly two million votes, the 26th Annual Webby Awards was one of the biggest in history. The Network of the Year is awarded to the agency with the most Webby and People’s Voice wins, Nominations and Honorees. 

“Wow, global agency network of the year,” said Dimi Albers, CEO of DEPT®. “Being recognised as the top network at the Webbys says a lot about how far we have come in the last six years. We’re humbled to be recognised, and super thankful for all our clients who enable us to do what we do best. We’re very much looking forward to continuing pioneering technology and marketing to help brands stay ahead.”

For DEPT®, the magical, branded experience that digitally brings de Bijenkorf’s wonderful shopping experience to life won the People’s Voice award in the Best Mobile Visual Design – Aesthetic category.

The Eurovision Village, the unique, 3D world we created for the 2021 Eurovision Song Contest, scooped the People’s Voice awards in the General Social – Events category and the Virtual & Remote – Music category.

The Fingerspelling with Machine Learning website created by Hello Monday, which joined DEPT® last month, was a stand-out performer, securing two Webby wins in the Diversity & Inclusion and Best User Interface categories, and People’s Voice awards for Technical Achievement, Diversity & Inclusion, and Best User Interface.

In addition, Hello Monday won the People’s Voice awards for the Star Atlas website in the Entertainment category, and in the Science category with The Emotional Sound Experience for Hume AI.

The innovative experience DEPT® created for Amazon Prime for the launch of Without Remorse, which saw Twitch streamers taking part in a live, real life gaming experience, won the People’s Voice award for Best Narrative Experience in the Virtual Remote – Immersive category.

BASIC/DEPT® had another hugely successful year with five awards, winning the People’s Voice award for Patagonia in the Best Mobile Experience category, and the Patagonia Footprints Chronicles received the People’s Voice for Corporate Social Responsibility.  In addition, the Silver Oak site won the People’s Voice award for Best Business Blog/Website, Crafted won in the Websites & Mobile Sites – Events category, and the Google Store won in the Shopping Websites and Mobile Sites category.

“DEPT® has set the standard for innovation and creativity on the Internet,” said Claire Graves, Executive Director of The Webby Awards. “This award is a testament to the skill, ingenuity, and vision of its creators.”

Presented by The Webby Awards, the Anthem Awards recognize the purpose-driven work of individuals, businesses, and organizations across the world. By amplifying the voices that spark global change, the awards are defining a new benchmark for impactful work that inspires others to take action in their own communities.

Pooja Dingidal, Global Head of Impact at DEPT®, shares: “We are so incredibly proud of our team for continuing to invest their time, skills and creativity into projects that make a positive difference in the world. Our Anthem wins this year truly speak to how digital solutions can have a deep, leveraged and reaching impact across humanity– from public health, to learning and accessibility, to social connection and community.”

AWS & WPHL: Easy Genomics
DEPT®
3 x Silver

Easy Genomics, the revolutionary project that democratizes genomic sequencing, won three silver awards in the Responsible Technology, Innovation, and Health categories.

DEPT® teamed up with Amazon Web Services and the Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene to create an open-source digital solution to help gain a better understanding of diseases and disease prevention. Easy Genomics is a game-changing solution that’s improving the future of public health bioinformatics, and will be used by The Association of Public Health Laboratories in all public health labs in the USA.

Daniel’s Music Foundation
BASIC/DEPT®
1 x Silver

Daniel’s Music Foundation, a nonprofit empowering people with disabilities through music and Disability Awareness programs, has been changing lives in NYC for almost 20 years.

They needed a website that could keep up, so they came to us for a new one that would build trust, share joy, showcase impact, and also be accessible to people of all abilities. We raised the bar of excellence in accessible design; rather than modifying an experience for a few, it’s about finding ways to translate it for everyone to equally join the fun.

Since launch three months ago, the foundation saw a record high number in inquiries as interest grew exponentially from more people who wanted to work with and for them as instructors. This project won a silver award in the Diversity, Equity & Inclusion category.

Dossy: A simple video app for meaningful connections
DEPT®
1 x Silver

The Dossy app, which is designed to bridge the gap and reduce social isolation among elderly individuals, was recognized in the Responsible Technology category (silver) and in Diversity, Equity & Inclusion category (bronze).

Together with Dossy, we pioneered the use of technology to focus on designing and developing an accessible solution to empower seniors to achieve face-to-face communication effortlessly. Dossy helps them stay connected with their families, friends, and virtual volunteers for meaningful conversations through easy-to-use and secure video calls.

Google Jigsaw: Info Interventions
Hello Monday/DEPT®
1 x Silver

A silver award in the Human & Civil Rights category was given to the Google Jigsaw campaign and website. Jigsaw is a unit within Google that researches threats to open societies, and builds technology, products and tangible methods that inspire scalable solutions. Info Interventions is a collection of four of these experiments specifically created to help people build information resilience at critical moments in their online journey.

Together, our campaign reached 3.5M users of our target audience, while helping to drive efficient awareness and traffic to this important initiative.

Voting polls are now open to the public until Thursday 21st December 2023.

Please cast your votes for your favorite finalists via the links below:

• Easy Genomics
  Responsible Technology – Partnership or Collaboration
  Responsible Technology – Innovation
  Health – Service
  
• Give A Hand
  Diversity, Equity & Inclusion – Best Use of AI
  Responsible Technology – Book, Story or Feature
  
• Roche X Project
  Diversity, Equity & Inclusion – Campaign – Brand
  XProject selected in Health – Campaign – Brand
  
• eBay x Pre-Loved
  Sustainability, Environment & Climate – Best Influencer Collaboration
  
• Google Jigsaw
  Human & Civil Rights – Education or Literacy Program or Platform
  
• DOSSY
  Diversity, Equity & Inclusion – Service
  Responsible Technology – Service
  
• Lean in Girls
  Diversity, Equity & Inclusion – Branded Content or Collaboration
  
• Van Gogh Museum
  Education, Art & Culture – Special Projects
  
• Daniel’s Music Foundation
  Diversity, Equity & Inclusion -Product, Innovation & Service

Kudos to our talented teams and awesome clients for this incredible achievement, and thank you for voting!

Each year, The Webby Awards‘ executive team hosts Webby Talks, their annual thought leadership event to explore the biggest digital trends impacting our world and work. This year, DEPT® and Dutch Digital Design are hosting the event, via livestream and at the DEPT® office in Amsterdam.

Emma Whitfield, Production & Experience Director of The Webby Awards, will talk about The Race to Outpace, a curated dive into the breakneck speed of AI innovations, with insights on how to keep pace with this new era of the Internet. Max Pinas, Executive Creative Director at DEPT®, will be doing a talk around AI and the Future of Creativity, unlocking new dimensions in art and design.

We will look at how AI is changing the game in content creation, spatial design, and commerce. You’ll get to see cool examples of how automated creativity, flexible design, and super-tailored shopping experiences are making a difference. You won’t want to miss how AI can take your campaigns & platforms to the next level and really connect with your audience.

This year’s Webby Talks is presented by Canva, and YouGov.

Sign up now and join the livestream on Wednesday, November 15, between 19:00 – 20:00 CET. If you are in Amsterdam and want to come to the in-person event at our office, sign up here!