Bath creative web design agency Mud has won three international awards for the brand and website it created for Bristol-based tensile fabric engineers Base Structures, putting a South West partnership on a global stage.

See the full project in Mud’s Base Structures case study, or visit the live site.

Base designs, engineers and rigs tensile fabric structures, from canopies and facades to enclosures and one-off installations. Its work features at Lord’s Cricket Ground, the Science Museum and RAID Museum Denmark, and it works alongside practices including Zaha Hadid Architects.

Trio of Awards for Mud & Base

Since launching earlier this year, the project has won:

Web Excellence Award, Architecture category. The global programme judges entries on innovation, usability, content and user experience, visual design, and technical performance.

Silver, Creativepool Annual, Web category. Judging combines an industry panel with a People’s Choice vote, and winners feature in the Annual, which goes to agencies and brand leaders worldwide.

Silver, W3 Awards, General Websites – Architecture & Design category. The W3s are judged by the Academy of Interactive and Visual Arts, an invitation-only body of senior figures from organisations including Wired, Disney and Condé Nast.

Matt Powell, Founder & Creative Director at Mud, says: 

“I’m really proud of this project. And it’s fantastic for the client and our team to get the recognition they deserve for it. Working on a brand alongside the website is always our favourite kind of project, as everything can cascade from a single idea. I think you can feel that in the Base website.

“Of course, it’s always easier to work with an ambitious and impressive brand like Base Structures. Winning three awards is the cherry on top.”

From website brief to brand

Base first came to Mud for a new website. Early discovery work made it clear that the brand needed to catch up with the company’s ambitions, so the project started there.

Jacob Little, Marketing & PR Consultant at Base Structures, says:

“Mud brought an understanding from the outset that this project was more than just building a new website. The team responded to the brief with proactive, strategic ideas that balanced creativity with the need to evolve our positioning in a way that felt authentic to the business.

There was a real sense of friendly collaboration throughout — ideas flowed naturally, and the whole process felt open, constructive, and enjoyable.”

The brand idea, “tension builds”, came from the forces at the heart of tensile fabric engineering: the tension in the rigging, the balance between creative ideas and technical precision, and the suspense as a large-scale structure is finally realised. That push-pull runs through the website, where linear elements warp, stretch and bounce as visitors scroll.

Behind the scenes, a Craft CMS platform lets the Base team tell the stories of their most iconic projects. It also holds an archive of more than 150 past projects, hidden from public view but available to the sales team when they’re pitching.

About Mud

Our name is Mud. We are a creative web design agency based in Bath, specialising in Craft CMS. We bring a down-to-earth feeling to web design. A feeling that builds trust, focuses on the detail, and delivers meaningful work that has a big impact.