Great news for the ducks as it was officially announced that we won not one, but two Horizon Interactive Awards. The accolades come as a result of our hard work on the ‘OfficeCavalry.com’ and The EU: What’s in it for me?’ projects, which were launched late last year.

The Awards

This year marked the 9th anniversary of the Horizon Interactive Awards, where we also took home awards in 2007 and 2009 for our own website. The award “is a prestigious international competition recognizing outstanding achievement among interactive media producers” with over a thousand entries coming from 22 different countries across the globe.

The judging panel were looking for websites with “the best blend between creativity and functionality” and were judged on their: solution creativity and originality, overall graphic design / appearance / user experience, communication of message, technical merit and effectiveness of solution.

The duck’s were thrilled to learn we had won two awards.

The Award Winning Productions

The EU: What’s in it for me? was one of only 66 entrants in the entire competition to win a Gold Award. As a “Governmental Agency” gold winner, the website is also automatically considered for the ‘Best of Category’ and ‘Best of Show’ awards (the highest accolades available!). The website, named The EU: What’s in it for me?, is an online version of the EU’s popular “What’s in it for me?” brochure. The new website has been designed to offer a superior and engaging way for the user to access information about The EU and how EU decisions affect UK citizens.

The project was governed via a UCD (user centred design) process utilising Cyber-Duck’s in-house eye tracking service, with real users being tested and interviewed, to gain essential insights into the wants and needs of real UK citizens. The eye tracking and other forms of strategic user centred principles helped to shape a superior user experience for the EU.

The European commission were delighted with the Gold Award.

Innovative freelancing portal, OfficeCavalry.com was also in on the action, scooping a Silver Award in the Business to Business category just a month after their previously reported Webby win. The SaaS (software as a service) website offers freelancers a place to set up a profile and showcase their skills, as well as offering ‘project owners’ the option to outsource projects, when meeting a tight project deadline is a must.

For OfficeCavalry.com this is two awards in as many months.

Reaction to our latest achievement

The European Commission in the UK were delighted with the news, with Head of Media, Antonia Mochan, stating:

“This reward justifies our decision to select Cyber-Duck as the Digital Agency to lead us in the right direction. Their enthusiasm and creativity helped us deliver a product that we were very happy with, and it’s great to see this validated by the Horizon Interactive Awards judges”.

Antonia Mochan, Head of Media at European Commission in the UK.

Cyber-Duck Production Director Matt Gibson was also elated with the outcome, saying:

“The team is delighted to win these two new Horizon Interactive awards in 2011 adding to our two previous accolades earlier this year. These awards justify our position as one of the leading digital agencies in Europe focusing on delivering award winning web and mobile productions. This is a testament to our UCD and agile (scrum) methodologies, which are succeeding in pushing our clients to the next level.”

Matt Gibson, Production Director at Cyber-Duck.

There’s more to come

Cyber-Duck have continued a working relationship with the European Commission, following the success of “The EU: What’s in it for me?” with another project – this time for the Arsenal ‘Double Club’ charity. The project is co-ordinated by Arsenal in the community, the non profit wing of Arsenal Football Club, and backed by the European Commission’s language learning programme. The website is due to be launched later this year.

Cyber-Duck have taken home their first ever Webby award from the 15th Annual event.

The Webbys are an incredibly prestigious industry recognition of outstanding work in the digital industry, and with almost 10,000 entrants from around the world Cyber-Duck was one of only a handful to claim a prize.

The award, an ‘Official Honouree’ title in the employment category was for work on the OfficeCavalry.com project. The entire website, including the back end, was developed in-house by the Cyber-Duck team.

“It’s a really proud moment for us” said Danny Bluestone, MD of Cyber-duck, “We’ve won plenty of awards over the last 4 years, but this is the first Webby we’ve got our hands on; it’s a real reflection of the point Cyber-Duck has got to in the industry.”

Well done to everyone involved in the project, and we wish OfficeCavalry.com every success in becoming the next big thing in the freelancing world.

Cyber-Duck has added to its long list of awards with a prestigious CMA Best Use of Website Award 2010 for its client OAG.

The CMA (Construction Marketing Awards), organised by the Chartered Institute of Marketing, recognise and reward marketing excellence within the construction industry.

Figure 1.1 - OAG's website features a sleek, user-centred design and effective marketing, which have pushed the firm forward and earned industry-wide recognition.

Cyber-Duck produced OAG’s website which was up against the likes of Sage Construction, Gifford and Groundforce in the award short-list. It features a professional design, easy to use graphical user interface and interactive diagrams which all matches up to OAG’s position as market leaders.

The judges commented on the site: “An impressive site clearly reflecting the company’s design and engineering excellence. A range of interactive tools provide clients with detailed technical drawings as well as documentation to help with cost planning and design. A good-looking site that encourages exploration through an authoritative yet relaxed look and helpful, pre-emptive navigation. There is good use of modern web technologies to aid interaction and improve usability. The site is also great for lead generation.”

Cyber-Duck have been the winners of four different awards in 2010, including the International Davey Awards, Communicator Awards, W3 Awards and CMA Awards. This is the second award Cyber-Duck has won for the OAG website this year.

View the award-winning website online: OAG

Cyber-Duck are privileged to announce that we’ve been honoured with three awards at the 6th annual International Davey Awards.

The Davey Awards honours the achievements of the “Creative Davids” who derive their strength from big ideas, rather than stratospheric budgets.

Winning entries of the esteemed Davey Awards were selected by the International Academy of the Visual Arts, who were impressed with Cyber-Duck’s distinctive and creative work on the already award winning Rosslyn Analytics website, as well as the production work on the OAG website and collaboration with NordicBet on the launch of their newly designed website which offered many betting industry firsts.

Cyber-Duck’s Award Winning Creations

An incredible pool of over 4000 entries from the best small firms in the world entered this year’s Davey Awards, but only ‘outstanding entries’ were rewarded with the prestigious Silver Davey Award. Cyber-Duck won the silver awards for the category of ‘Consulting’ for our work on the Rosslyn Analytics website, as well as the category of ‘Games/Games Related’ for the NordicBet website. Finally, our third silver award was a result of our hard work on the OAG website, which came in the category of ‘Manufacturing’.

This is the first time that Cyber-Duck has been recognised for our work with a prestigious Davey Award, and continues another successful award-winning year at Cyber-Duck.

Some of the awards we’ve bought home in 2010 include: the prestigious ‘Best in Class’ Award at the Interactive Media Awards, a nomination for ‘Best E-business’ at the FSB Awards, the award of excellence for ‘interactive’ for our work on the BoonSpace website at the Communicator Awards, and the recent silver win at the W3 awards in the category of ‘consulting websites’ for the Rosslyn Analytics website.

The IMA competition is designed to elevate the standards of excellence on the Internet. Not only were judges blown away by Cyber-Duck’s sleek and professional company website, they were also delighted with the exciting and professional new blog the Cyber-Duck team built for London entrepreneur Anton Kreil.

The judging panel awarded Cyber-Duck their Outstanding Achievement accolade for Anton Kreil – The Blog. The Outstanding Achievement award is the second highest honour bestowed by the IMA team and an extremely challenging award to win. Websites chosen to receive it must excel in all areas of the judging criteria (Design, Content, Feature Functionality, Usability and Standards Compliance) and represent a very high standard of planning, execution and overall professionalism.

The Cyber-Duck website also received an Outstanding Achievement award in the category of Web Design/Development. Winners in this category must show outstanding innovation, attention to detail, overall professionalism and raw talent.

Cyber-Duck was first recognised by the Interactive Media Awards in 2007, when the company was presented with two accolades for the design and development of Periscopix’s quirky online presence and a further two awards for its work on the Syntaxin UK biopharmaceuticals website.

View Cyber-Duck’s Certificates of Excellence online:

Anton Kreil – The Blog
Cyber-Duck Company Website