Vega Digital Awards announced in late May found Forum One, a digital agency having a solid foothold in Drupal, winning nine awards in six different categories. 

Initiated by the  International Awards Associate (IAA), The Vega Awards acknowledge those who create and continually expand the digital universe. The IAA also gives the Muse Creative Awards, Muse Desing Awards, Titan Business Awards, Nyx Game Awards, Muse Photography Awards, Titan Property Awards, etc. 

The organization, established in 2012, started giving out industry recognitions beginning 2016 to honour, promote and encourage creativity by providing a new standard of excellence for evaluating media design production and distribution.

According to a press announcement, Forum One received nine awards in six categories in this year’s awards for Canopus (platinum), Centauri (gold), and Arcturus (rose gold) across the categories of government, health care services, diversity & inclusion, art, nonprofit, education, and financial services. 

Canopus award in the “Website for Government” category went to the Harry S. Truman Foundation website. The Harry S. Truman Foundation supports the graduate education of outstanding young men and women committed to public service leadership. The Foundation was created in 1975; it has helped nearly 3,000 Truman Scholars who are making a difference globally.  

Truman Foundation staff selected Forum One to redesign and develop the new Truman.gov. Forum One transformed Truman.gov into a streamlined design that is tailored to each of Truman’s main audience groups: scholars, candidates, and faculty representatives.

Canopus award in the category of ‘Website for Health Care Services’ went to the website implementation of Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute. [Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI)](https://www.pcori.org/) funds research to help patients, caregivers, clinicians, policymakers, researchers, insurers, and other stakeholders make informed healthcare decisions. Forum One has worked as a digital strategic partner to PCORI since 2013. They helped the organization establish its identity and extend its reach online, providing services spanning digital strategy, user experience, design, Drupal development, analytics, and ongoing support and optimizations. 

Centauri award in the category of ‘Website for Diversity & Inclusion’ went to National Museum of African American History and Culture’s Talking About Race. Forum One worked with the NMAAHC team to design and launch the Talking About Race section of the website, extending their design system and inviting user experience to share relevant and engaging resources for diverse audiences. Talking About Race has been widely referenced and shared as a compelling, timely, and actionable resource in recent months as people across the country seek to educate themselves and others and have candid, overdue, and often difficult conversations about race in our society and how to make substantial progress in ending racism. 

Forum One also grabbed the Centauri award in the ‘Website for Government’ category. The award went for the website implementation of Environmental Protection Agency. Forum One has worked with [EPA](https://www.epa.gov/) since 2012 to plan and implement a range of strategic, prioritized efforts to unify and optimize the Agency’s complex enterprise Drupal presence, encompassing hundreds of sites. Their work has included an enterprise website redesign of epa.gov, and a full platform upgrade and migration from Drupal 7 to Drupal 8 and 9 on a new cloud hosting infrastructure that we architected that launched in 2021. 

Centauri award in the category ‘Website for Art / Performing Arts’ was shared by two different projects of Forum One: for Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts and for American Council of Learned Societies.

Forum One designed and developed a user-friendly and flexible digital experience for the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts to serve its evolving needs and diverse audiences in a time of rebranding and transition, to showcase exhibitions, drive engagement with events and classes, and deliver an integrated and world-class experience for visitors that celebrates the art of the Delta region while bringing national and international voices into the community.

American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) supports the creation and circulation of knowledge that advances understanding of humanity and human endeavors in the past, present, and future, with a view toward improving the human experience. Forum One worked with ACLS to translate their new strategic priorities into an engaging digital experience. They also helped to streamline their workflows and content administration with CRM integration, improved site architecture, and a component-based design approach. Their design aimed to bring the human element of the humanities into focus.

Centauri award in the category ‘Website for Nonprofit’ went to Urban Institute Ed Data Portal. The Urban Institute is a “nonprofit research organization that provides data and evidence to help advance upward mobility and equity.” Forum One partnered with the Urban Institute’s Center on Education and Policy to reenvision their Education Data Explorer. This tool provides data on schools across the country – School Districts, Colleges and Universities, Legal Units (i.e. KIP charter schools) – tied to geographies (city, town, county, census tract). They worked with the Urban Institute to redesign the Education Data Explorer improving its front-end interface and workflow for data updates.

Arcturus award in the category of ‘Website for School/University’ was grabbed by Forum One project: Nation’s Report Card, National Assessment of Educational Progress Long Term Trends. Since 2012, Educational Testing Service (ETS) has engaged Forum One to design and build more engaging, interactive reports to share the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) results. Since then, Forum One has completed multiple reports each year under the NAEP program, including the most recent 2019 Nation’s Report Cards for Mathematics, Reading, and Science, and the 2018 Technology and Engineering Literacy, Civics, Geography, and U.S. History Assessments, designing and building interactive reports to explore NAEP data at the national, state, and district levels.

In the category ‘Website for School/University,’ Arcturus award went to ‘Farm to School Census’. Farm to School is a nationwide grant program run by the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) that encourages school districts to buy more food from local farmers to spur economic development and make meals healthier, more affordable, and more environmentally conscious. Since 2014, Forum One has partnered with FNS to uncover and illustrate the most compelling stories emerging from the annual Farm to School Census, which collects and analyzes data on how 18,000 school districts are using local food. In 2019, USDA conducted the third Farm to School Census to measure progress towards reaching their goals.

(Disclaimer: Both the Vega Awards and the IAA websites are not accessible in most countries. The specific awards mentioned here are limited to the US). 

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