As always, Built In Colorado looks to foster the growth of local digital companies by helping entrepreneurs connect and learn from each other. Here are three veterans of Colorado's digital ecosystem who are true creators and constantly push the community forward - and here's your opportunity to take a few pointers from them.
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Laura William: Creative Director, Booj
booj is the both the motto and the name of a Colorado-based company specializing in web design and complex development. The name speaks to the company's approach to staying competitive and innovative in a lightning-paced environment of complex web development by driving the industry forward.Founded in 2005, booj is growing quickly and making waves by fostering employees’ creativity with fun. Built In Colorado caught up with Laura William, booj’s Creative Director and got her take on web design and life at booj:
[ibimage==26546==Medium==none==self==ibimage_align-left]Scott Hooten: co-founder & Creative Director, Imulus
You have to be nimble and quick to successfully traverse the tectonic shifts from print to web to mobile that have transformed the field of graphic design over the last twenty years. That’s why it’s no surprise, that Scott Hooten, the co-founder and Creative Director at Imulus, a mobile application and web design company based in Boulder, Co is also a serious trail runner. Hooten entered design school at Cal Poly SLO back when the internet was a seedling. Luckily, he had the foresight to go right back to school at Savannah College of Art and Design as the internet began to take hold.
By the end of the millennium, Hooten was riding high on the dot.com wave, working as Art Director at Refinery, a Philadelphia-based web design company, with offices in Boulder. There, he worked on big, complex projects for Sony, Warner-Bros, Johnson & Johnson, and a handful of other Fortune 500s.
When boom gave way to bust and Refinery closed up shop in 2002, Hooten and two of his colleagues founded Imulus. Today, Imulus has high profile clients and over 16 developers and designers, two of whom were just named MVP candidates by Umbraco, a growing community committed to using Umbraco as their primary CMS.
Here’s what Hooten had to say to Built in Colorado about Imulus and the creative process:
RJ Owen: Director of User Experience, Universal Mind
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Although he is new to his position as Director of User Experience at Universal Mind, RJ Owen is well-versed in the Colorado tech scene. Most recently at Convercent and EffectiveUI, Owen is a University of Colorado Denver MBA and a product pro (he studied computer science and physics before that). Now, outside of Universal Mind, Owen runs CreativeMornings in Denver and is heavily involved in non-profit Water for People.
Whether in his work inside or outside of Universal Mind, incorporating data in the design process is key for Owen: "I'm not be being a designer wearing a pink beret," he said.
Built In Colorado sat down with Owen to hear about his design process, his projects in the community and his ever-present desire to become a comic book artist:
Check out Denver and Boulder Web Designer jobs here: http://www.builtincolorado.com/jobs/category/79
