Elemental Wins Webby

12/6/2006 - Toronto, ON

Toronto communication firm Elemental Inc. was recently honoured with a coveted Webby Award of Distinction, one of the world’s most prestigious honours for web development and design.

“It’s like the Academy Awards for web design,” says Brent Wardrop, Elemental president and founder. “We’re very proud to have had our work recognized on such an international scale.”

Elemental won the award for their work for the Face Forward Foundation (www.faceforward.ca). Face Forward is a not-for-profit organization that helps people suffering with lipoatrophy, a particularly visible effect of HIV/AIDS that causes people living with the disease to lose their facial and body fat, resulting in dramatic facial wasting. Face Forward helps people manage both the physical and emotional aspects of the disease.

Lipoatrophy is much more than a physical problem, however. When facial wasting becomes more pronounced, men and women often become ostracized by their own communities. Their appearance becomes a stigma, and so in addition to having AIDS, they lose the support of their friends and family and become very isolated. Many become depressed, and even suicidal. To help those people combat that isolation and depression, the Face Forward Foundation chose to create an online community to give them a place to connect with others, ask questions, talk to medical professionals – and feel less alone with their disease.

Elemental designed and built the website/online community. It includes a variety of resources for people living with the physical and emotional effects of HIV and AIDS, including treatment information, a message board, a referral network for everything from life coaches to HIV care centres, information on applying for financial support, and a wealth of information helpful to people living with the disease.

“When we were building the Face Forward site,” says Wardrop, “I met a man who had AIDS, and was suffering from lipoatrophy. He told me that when he found out he had AIDS, he got lots of support from his friends and his community. However, when he got lipoatrophy, and as he put it, really started ‘looking the part,’ nobody wanted to be around him. He became isolated, lonely and terribly depressed. An online community was exactly the sort of anonymous yet warm place where he could reconnect a little bit, and understand that he wasn’t alone.”

The Face Forward site has had a positive impact on people suffering from lipoatrophy. People with HIV/AIDS can go there to talk to healthcare professionals and psychiatrists, and feel comfortable in the anonymity and privacy of being online.

“The site was designed to function as a place where people could deal with their issues privately and comfortably – before possibly taking the next step and meeting with medical professionals face to face,” says Wardrop.

Based in Toronto and New York, Elemental Inc. has been providing award-winning creative and solid business thinking to a wide variety of clients for over 13 years. They are a full-service communications firm with specialized divisions that have the expertise to craft your message online, in print, via radio, TV or as an installation, and offer exceptional and measurable ROI for everything they do.


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