Exciting news from the Terentia community! At the 2025 Hermes Creative Awards, Mote Marine Laboratory & Aquarium took home the Gold Award for their stunning website redesign.

A brainchild of Mote’s in-house Communications team, the project was championed in collaboration with Big Sea, their web partner that provided the design and development support.

Terentia is proud to be a technology partner in this award-winning project, providing the API that connects Mote’s WordPress site to its digital asset management system (DAMS). It was our first project of its kind—but certainly won’t be the last.

We met with Alexis Crabtree, Senior Manager of Creative Services at Mote, to chat about her team’s big win and what it means for their online engagement.

What are the Hermes Creative Awards?

The Hermes Creative Awards are one of the world's largest creative competitions, recognizing excellence in design, marketing, and communications for over 30 years. Its past winners range from Fortune 500 companies to small-but-mighty organizations eager to try their odds.

In 2025, Mote Marine Laboratory & Aquarium entered their website redesign for the judges’ consideration in the Electronic Media category.

“The website was a multi-year effort, so we definitely knew we wanted to throw our hat in the ring,” says Alexis.

“Our small team turns out an incredible amount of work. The Hermes Awards are an opportunity to showcase and recognize our amazing staff members.”

Receiving this peer recognition highlights the importance of Mote’s in-house Communications team’s dedication. “We were so proud to share the news with our board!” Alexis adds.

About Mote’s award-winning project

A long-standing fixture in Sarasota County, Mote Marine Laboratory and Aquarium is a non-profit dedicated to advancing research, science, and education on marine conservation.

Redesigning Mote’s website was intended to further its ability to deliver an immersive experience for online visitors.

For staff, the project proved to be an ambitious, multi-year collaborative effort. But its success shows that even small creative teams can build award-winning websites that resonate—with the right technology and support.

To come away with a Gold Hermes Award, the Mote team credits the addition of these new features:

• Accordion-style homepage design: Empowers online visitors to find what they need quickly and easily on the web interface. Its accordion design is tailored to the three pillars of Mote’s work: research, education, and the aquarium.
  
  

• Animal Encyclopedia: Features up-to-date information on more than 350 aquatic animals, all in one searchable place. To connect with the public, the Animal Encyclopedia offers a beautiful interface, powered by the Terentia REST API integration between Mote’s DAMS and new website.
  
  

• Flexible WordPress back-end: Makes it easy for the Mote team to build unique, engaging webpages using modular content blocks, built into the back-end of their WordPress website.

And this win means a lot to Mote’s Communications team. “Big names apply for these awards, and it’s great to see a non-profit of our size be recognized by industry experts,” Alexis shares.

“It’s really validating and confirms that the years of hard work we put into the website redesign were worth it.”

Aquatic species categories in Mote's Animal Encyclopedia

DAMS-powered: Animal Encyclopedia feature

Backed by the Terentia DAMS and API, Mote’s Animal Encyclopedia lets the public engage with its marine research by showcasing the aquatic animals studied there—many of which visitors can meet at the aquarium.

Each online record features a high-quality image with details on the animal’s species, scientific and common names, and other intriguing facts. Plus, the encyclopedia is also fully searchable using keyword search and the species type filter.

Updating the Animal Encyclopedia is streamlined by the Terentia REST API that connects Mote’s website with its DAMS where staff oversee digital assets, metadata, and other documentation. (The same process is also followed to maintain their staff directory, The Humans of Mote.)

Alexis explains how this integration works: “First, Mote’s talented team of writers input information into the Terentia DAMS using the fields we’ve established for Animal Encyclopedia records. Through the API that Terentia built, the WordPress website then reaches out to the Terentia DAMS daily to pull over new or updated photos and metadata.”

“This way, our website visitors get the most up-to-date information much faster,” she adds.

And leveraging this API also offers other benefits to Mote’s teams, including:

• Granular permissions: All staff have access to the DAMS, but only certain users can modify the backend of Mote’s website. Team members can access what they need and all data that goes live on the website is properly vetted first.
  
  

• Built for performance: No need to ever worry about the Mote website slowing down or running out of storage from high-res images. All files are stored in the Terentia DAMS, which provides unlimited storage and secure remote access via Microsoft Azure.
  
  

• Future integration: Digital assets and metadata inside the DAMS can be connected to Collections Engagement, part of the Terentia platform Mote’s team plans to use in the future. And instead of wasting hours on reuploading the assets, everything will integrate seamlessly when they do.

An online record for Acan Lord coral in Mote's Animal Encyclopedia

Collaborating with Terentia

Strong collaboration among internal stakeholders and external partners helped drive Mote’s website redesign project to success.

“Terentia was with us every step of the way on this multi-year project. They worked with Big Sea and our team to explore what was possible, troubleshoot, and figure out how to make the website work. It was a really nice, collaborative experience,” Alexis notes.

Terentia DAMS and API are designed to support teamwork and collaboration—not leave staff distracted by a tech stack prone to problems.

“Terentia’s goal is to offer powerful flexibility without the need for custom development. Our standard REST API made it easy to integrate the structured Animal Encyclopedia assets and metadata from Mote’s Terentia DAMS into their website,” says Neal Bilow, Founder and CEO of Terentia.

“Though Terentia’s approach may feel custom, it’s rooted in a configurable, scalable platform designed to adapt to your needs without complex coding.”