Get to know the five finalists for Designer of the Year

This team member, freelancer or consultant made a mark on a startup’s product by providing an amazing user experience or beautiful design. And the finalists are…

Elevate’s Jake Stutzman nabbed the award for Designer of the Year in 2013. 

It won’t be long until we’re all looking elegant and dapper August 21 at Midland Theatre in Kansas City, celebrating another year of growth and success across the region at the Silicon Prairie Awards.

We’ve seen unique storylines unfold in our three core regions—an influx of code schools in Nebraska, Iowa’s foundational growth of accelerators and spaces for collaboration, and Kansas City’s attraction as a hub for testing out new technologies.

Everyone plays a part, which brings us here. Before we can celebrate, we need all of you to help us determine which individuals and companies we’ll be crowning. It’s a two-week voting period that ends at 11:59 p.m. on August 11. That means you have loads of time to spread the word.
Cast your vote for the Silicon Prairie Awards!

Join us for the Silicon Prairie Awards: We have an exciting evening of community celebration planned for Aug. 21 at the Midland Theatre in Kansas City. Tickets are still available for the event, which includes an opening reception, keynote talk by N3TWORK co-founder Erik Lammerding, awards ceremony and closing party. Purchase your tickets today.

Meet the five Designer of the Year finalists

This team member, freelancer or consultant made a mark on a startup’s product by providing an amazing user experience or beautiful design.

Ben Sinclair, Offspring app

  • Co-founder and former partner at Shift
  • Nomination: “Ben brought great design to the Offspring app—best startup MVP app I’ve seen to date.”
  • Read more: Twitter, LinkedIn, Offspring app
 

Jared Krause, Think Big Partners

  • As the creative director for Think Big Partners, Jared leads all design or consults for every startup in the Think Big Portfolio.
  • He designs UX and UI for products as well as logo, app icon and occasional print design.
  • Nomination: “This year alone he has designed for Bodeefit, Moblico, Bigbang.io, Alishops and PitchCastr, to name a few. Jared’s insight to user experience is his key differentiation to any designer I’ve ever worked with and he was one of the rare ‘unicorn designers’ that can actually code his own design.”
  • Read more: LinkedIn, Twitter, Dribbble
 

Katie Hottovy, Nobl

  • Designed marketing and communication materials.
  • Prescribes to the build it, break it, fix it mindset.
  • Implemented beautiful flat design for Nobl
  • Nomination: “Large agency professional quality from a single designer. To design a product that’s beautiful and intuitive is no easy feat. At Nobl, Katie designed and built the user interface that the healthcare industry has been waiting for. It got the attention of Microsoft who now showcases Nobl’s software on their Windows tablets and phones.”
  • Read more: SPN, Twitter, LinkedIn, Behance
 

Kelly Tomlinson, Cremalab

  • Kelly is a UI/UX designer at Cremalab also focused on brand and community engagement.
  • She is the founder of Coffee & Design, chapter director of Startup Grind Kansas City, and a Kansas City Startup Weekend organizer.
  • Does freelance design for startups
  • Nomination: “She’s not just an awesome designer (though she is), she also takes time to convene the entire design community in KC and plug them in to the startup community through Coffee and Design.”
  • Read more: LinkedIn, Twitter, Dribbble
 

Mark Palmer, Far Reach

  • Creative Director at Far Reach in Cedar Falls, Iowa
  • Nomination: “When you’re building a complex product like Mortgage MarketSmart—an interactive map-based mortgage data platform—user experience is crucial. Mark worked with the Far Reach development team to put together an easy-to-use layout for the platform—one that takes an extremely complex system and makes it surprisingly usable.”
  • Read more: LinkedIn, Mortgage MarketSmart

Silicon Prairie Awards content is brought to you by CenturyLink. 

This story is part of the AIM Archive

This story is part of the AIM Institute Archive on Silicon Prairie News. AIM gifted SPN to the Nebraska Journalism Trust in January 2023. Learn more about SPN’s origin »

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