BOSTON, Feb. 11, 2000 -- Aquent Partners announced the winners of its New England Web Design Awards, the first-ever awards program to recognize the cutting-edge creativity of Web professionals whether they work within or outside of the corporate community. More than 1,000 members of the Web community attended last evening's NEWD Awards Gala at Boston's Avalon nightclub. The winners, chosen out of hundreds of submissions from Web talent throughout New England, are:

--   Best Use of Multimedia: Turbonium.com (www.turbonium.com) -
     Robert Hodgin, Alan Pafenbach, Bill Whelan and team from Arnold 
     Communications

--   Best Use of Navigation/Architecture: LLBean.com (www.llbean.com)
     - Martha Golub, Mark Gordon, Steve Lynch and team from Digitas

--   Best Use of EZine/Content Site: Ancient Egypt at the MFA
     (www.mfa.org/egypt) - James Sheldon and team from Zefer and the
     Museum of Fine Arts

--   Best Use of Animation: iilii.net (www.iilii.net) - J. Nordberg

--   Best Student Work: Pi a la mode (members.xoom.com/puddlesQ/pi) -
     Jiho Sohn

--   Best Portfolio/Promotional Site: Opacityzero.com
     (www.opacityzero.com) - Christine Pillsbury

--   Best Overall Design - Turbonium.com (www.turbonium.com) - Robert
     Hodgin, Alan Pafenbach, Bill Whelan and team from Arnold
     Communications

The winners were selected by a panel of seven judges, including Catriona Lohan-Conway, director of customer experience of Scient; Hugh Flanigan, vice president and associate creative director of Digitas; Michael Jaeger, creative director of Jaeger Di Paolo Kemp Design; Pam Esty, creative director of iCast.com; Ignacio "Nacho" Germade, creative director of Sapient; and Michael Brandt and Patrick Coyle, design directors of Razorfish.

The NEWD Awards were presented by Aquent, Association of Internet Professionals (AIP), United Digital Artists (UDA) and Webgrrls. Other corporate sponsors included Adobe Systems, Hale and Dorr LLP, BuyItOnline.com, iCast, Bare Bones Software, The Phoenix Communications/Media Group, Boston University - Corporate Education Center, Relativity, C-Bridge and Seyfarth, Shaw, Fairweather & Geraldson.

For additional information on the 2000 NEWD Awards and to view a listing of the finalists and winners, please visit www.newdawards.com

Aquent Partners is a specialized talent agency providing both contract and permanent experts in the areas of Creative and Design, Production and Presentations, Web Design and Development, and Systems Administration and Technical Support. Aquent Partners has placed more than 35,000 professionals in more than 30,000 client companies worldwide, and was recently named the official talent agency of the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA). Aquent's comprehensive portfolio of services can be accessed at www.aquent.com.