work · led by our creative advisor · Zero · 2026

Why Zero: an interactive website that won Awwwards Site of the Day

An interactive story site for Zero, an AI-native learning and hiring platform. Concept, storyboards and visual direction came from Zero's in-house design team under Atul Khola; BUNQ LABS built it. It was named Awwwards Site of the Day and FWA of the Month.

role: Head of Design & Experience: concept and design direction

Context

Zero describes itself as an all-in-one app to get hired into in-demand careers: people learn by doing projects inside simulated companies instead of working through courses. A feature list next to established education platforms would not have explained why the company exists. The team wanted a site that made the argument itself, so the brief became a single scrolling story about the gap between a degree and a job.

Atul Khola led Design & Experience at Zero. His team owned the concept, the storyboards and the visual direction. Zero's own engineers had no room for the build, so the team brought in an external development partner, BUNQ LABS, who won the job with a working proof of concept rather than a pitch deck.

What was done

• Wrote the argument first: the promise of the degree, where it breaks, and what replaces it, as six stages a visitor moves through by scrolling.
• Designed interactions that make the visitor take part. You draw a zero to unlock the site, hold to shatter a pane of glass, and end in a city you can explore.
• Produced the concept, storyboards and visual direction in-house, so the development partner started from finished visual material and not from a mood board.
• Worked with BUNQ LABS through a four-month build in Three.js, GLSL shaders, GSAP and Howler.
• Held the experience to a performance budget: the developers report more than a gigabyte of source assets reduced to a site under 10MB that runs at 60fps on a budget Android phone.

Outcomes

• More than 20 international recognitions across awards, nominations and features. source: atulkhola.com/zero
• Judges' scores are public: 7.73/10 for Site of the Day on Awwwards, 8.90 from the CSS Design Awards jury. source: Awwwards and CSS Design Awards listings
• Codrops published the development team's own account of the build, which credits concept and design direction to Atul Khola and four named members of Zero's team. source: Codrops, 17 July 2026

Recognition

Atul led the team that made the Why Zero site, with BUNQ LABS as development partner. That team won the following. Each line links to the awarding body's own page.

• Awwwards: Site of the Day (7 September 2026) and Developer Award
• The FWA: FWA of the Month (July 2026) and FWA of the Day
• CSS Design Awards: Website of the Day (11 August 2026), plus public awards for UI, UX and Innovation
• Orpetron: Site of the Month (July 2026)

The award pages credit the site, not a person. Awwwards lists Sindhur Dutta and Zero; The FWA lists Sindhur Dutta and Zero Design; Orpetron lists Zero Design and BUNQ LABS. Codrops credits concept and design direction to Atul Khola, Sanjay, Saba, Hamsa Rasheem, Akshai and team at Zero, and development to Sindhur Dutta, Shuprobho, Yashas and team at BUNQ LABS.

What this means for your project

If you want a launch site that people send to each other, the lesson from Why Zero is that the story and the visual material have to be finished before a developer writes a shader. That is how we run website work: argument, structure and direction first, then the build, with a performance budget from day one.

Relevant offers: Websites ($12,000–$40,000) · Launch Sprint ($12,000, 2 weeks) · Brand + Site ($22,000, 5–6 weeks). All prices →

Read more

• The live site
• Building Zero, the full story on atulkhola.com
• The engineering write-up on Codrops

Filed under: award-winning websites · edtech.

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