Snøhetta’s website honored with Excellence at the 31st Annual Communicator Awards

The Communicator Awards recognize excellence, effectiveness, and innovation in all areas of communication and are judged by the New York-based Academy of Interactive & Visual Arts (AIVA).

snohetta.com was announced as one of the winners in the website category and achieved the Award of Excellence, representing the highest honor of the competition, among standouts such as Netflix, NASA+, Getty Museum, Apple, and The Walt Disney Company.

The theme for this year's award was 'Communication is Connection.'

"Whether centered around emotionally resonant storytelling or Marketing Effectiveness case studies, the entries reflected the power of communication to bridge gaps between people, platforms, and perspectives," states AIVA's Managing Director Lauren Angeloni.

This year's jury included industry leaders from top brands and agencies, such as Google, Smithsonian, Microsoft, Spotify, Amazon, and The Andy Warhol Museum.

The new version of snohetta.com was launched in March 2023, and our main goal for the website was to find new, more engaging ways of communicating our projects, disciplines, and philosophy. We wanted a simple yet solid platform that would allow our people and expanding project portfolio to take center stage. 

The website was designed by Snøhetta's own graphic and digital design team, and true to Snøhetta's collaborative spirit, the project also involved representatives from all studios and disciplines, management, communication, and IT, as well as external collaborators who contributed to web development (Værsågod), type design (Dinamo Typefaces) and logo animation (Fus Animation).

During the process, we've worked extensively on conveying the physical and spatial aspects of our practice through technology, design, text and other content. We have designed and developed several custom features, including a globe view option when exploring projects, 3D modules that can be added to projects, interactive image headings for archive material, and a custom soundscape generator to convey sensory qualities in a digital context. 

In addition, we challenged ourselves to look at how everything digital also has a carbon footprint – and what we can do to reduce it. Our work included letting the website's design be guided by limitations, choosing to communicate with lighter images, videos, and interaction, and keeping the code as clean as possible. In 2024, this sustainability approach was recognized with Green Award in Visuelt, Norway’s largest competition for visual communication. 

Parallel to the new website, we updated our visual identity and explored how to keep the most important aspects of Snøhetta's existing visual language while introducing new contemporary elements and functionality.