Ben Sprague-Klepzig

Ben Sprague-Klepzig is a veteran marketer, having spent over 13 years at marketing firms, ad agencies and advertising departments in the Madison area. During his career he has hired and developed designers, provided art and creative direction to staff and colleagues, and served as the face of the client to some of Madison's top ad agencies. Currently Marketing Director for United Way of Dane County, Ben has also working in advertising at American Family Insurance. Marketing and advertising clients have included Miller Brewing, Rayovac, Famous Footwear, PENDA Truck Accessories, CUNA Mutual, Aprilaire and Universal Television.

Chris Maddox

Chris Maddox, a graduate of Purdue's visual communications program, grew up creatively in Madison agencies, stone-stepping from junior designer to art director through the '90s before founding Maddox Design Works in 1999. His work has won dozens of Addy awards and has been published in Print Magazine, How Magazine, Communication Arts, and Graphic Design USA, and can now been seen daily throughout the pages of shopbop.com, where he's currently employed as creative director.

Dan Merfeld

Dan Merfeld is Vice President of Interactive Media for Malcolm Advertising in Madison, WI. He is the youngest VP hired in the company's 40-year history. His unique job experience has given him first-hand knowledge in all areas of interactive design, development and online marketing. For over 3 years Dan was a Director and Developer at TheoryThree, an interactive company he co-founded.

Throughout his career, Dan has worked for, and with, such companies as GUILD.com, American Family Insurance, Case Construction, Evco Plastics, Echo Carving, The State of Wisconsin among others.

In his spare time, he serves as President of Design Madison and Co-Founding member of Design Madison Interactive. He has also donated his time to complete projects for the Madison Museum of Contemporary Arts (MMoCA), Alternatives Pregnancy Center for Women and Waterloo Community Injury Prevention Program: Fire PALS.

In 2006, Dan was recognized in In-Business Magazine as one of Madison's "40 under 40" top professionals.

Dina Sporer

Graphic designer by day - and quite often by night - Dina has been running red hot skillet, a visual media consultancy, for the last three years. Her experience managing her own shop - as well as from past employment with Macy's West in San Francisco, shopbop.com and The Hiebing Group in Madison - has yielded a wide range of expertise, including marketing communication strategy, brand development, identity, packaging and web design.

Dina's clients have included Capital Brewery, Lands' End, Quad/Graphics, MilwaukeeMagazine.com and The Roman Candle Pizzeria.

Georgene Pomplun

Georgene Pomplun has enjoyed a varied career in design and art direction. Her discipline is the print medium, although her first real job was that of Art Director at NBC-TV in Champaign, Illinois. She has subsequently been the art director for the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, O'Grady Design and Contemporary Books, both in Chicago, Senior Art Director at Pleasant Company (now AMerican Girl), Creative Director at Artville, and Art Director at Lands' End and for Guild.com, the latter for several years before she started her own design business, PomplunLLC. She has recently re-joined Guild as Print Production Manager, a new and more left-brain challenge, leaving her more time to pursue her lifelong passion of oil painting. Fanny Garver Gallery carries her work in Madison, and she has a show opening there this fall.

Heather Lins

After graduating from the UW-Madison with a BS in Art and a graphic design concentration, Heather Lins held a variety in-house design positions in state government agencies (also known as her "young artist as a state worker" period.) However, she soon found the variety she craved through freelance work and at Firepower Design, a small design firm in Madison, WI. From coasters to billboards and lots of stuff in between, Heather does work for a range of local, regional and national clients. It may be ad writing, publication design or a letterhead package. It may be for the coffee shop down the street (EVP Coffee) or a regional healthcare system (ProHealth Care). Privately, she's admitted to a soft spot for business-to-consumer branding with logowork for local businesses Ananda Salon & Spa and StudioBloom as examples. But, she loves all her clients equally. Really.

When not obsessing about letterspacing or cooing over paper swatchbooks, Heather likes to preach the gospel with teaching stints at UW-Madison and MATC. Furthermore, she's taken her designs off the page and to the street as half of Sturm/Lins Design Team, LLC. Together, they won a national bus shelter competition held by the City of Madison. You might have seen their work on State Street.

Kathy Sherwood

Kathy is a Creative Director/Art Director who has worked in ad agencies and in-house departments for a wide variety of clients, from Children's wear to cheese. She recently made the switch to open her own freelance business. Find out more at kathysherwood.com.

Mike Krol

Mike Krol is the youngest and newest designer at Planet Propaganda. Graduating from the School of Visual Arts in New York City this past May, Mike moved back to his home state of Wisconsin to represent the Midwest. Krol got his start in the graphic design profession by creating dozens of promotional t-shirts, posters, packaging and accessories for various national punk and ska bands such as Big D and The Kids Table, Mustard Plug, and Less Than Jake.

His work has appeared on the world-wide Van's Warped Tour the last three years and he has two shirt designs that are sold nationwide in the chain store, Hot Topic. Mike just recently had 2 pieces from his Junior year portfolio published in "Typography 27," the Annual of the Type Directors Club.

Mike likes Graphic Design, but sometimes finds music to be more interesting. He also plays drums, guitar and keyboard and composes fast, catchy, punk songs about girls and dinosaurs. Mike likes to combine design and music together, and put on multi-media concerts. He has performed three already, one of them at the Type Directors Club in Manhattan. Look at some pictures, and listen to some music at www.illwaukee.com if you are bored.

Patrick Farabaugh

Although born and raised outside Gary, Indiana, Patrick professionally considers himself a New Yorker at heart. At 18 he was hired by Entertainment Weekly, by 21 he was the Design Director of Seattle Magazine. The Editorial Director of Conde Nast, Tom Wallace, plucked him off an Alaskan fishing boat to be the Senior Designer of Conde Nast Traveler at 23. It was there that he got his first ASME (American Society of Magazine Editors) nomination. And last year he came to Madison.

Locally Patrick works running a gblt non-profit that he founded (www.madisongayhockey.org) and is in the organizing stages of launching a Madison-based lgbt magazine. He also has a monthly segment on WORT 89.9 FM

Sarah Cox

Sarah Cox is a freelance writer currently chipping away at her first creative nonfiction novel. Growing up in Boston, Massachusetts, she considers herself to be a "wicked good copywritah" and has written newsletters, marketing materials and the like for several Madison area restaurants. From 2001 - 2003 she earned her Masters in Journalism from Emerson College in Boston as she wrote and reported for a local business radio show and a weekly student-run newscast. She also completed two short television documentaries which aired locally in the Boston area. When not trying to be a mysterious brooding writer at the local coffee shop Sarah enjoys running, cocktails, meeting new people and observing the world.

Wes Grubbs

Wes Grubbs is an independent interactive media technologist driven by his passion for adventure and way information can be used and interpreted. With over a decade of experience in the interactive industry, Wes' focus is on intelligent interaction, data visualization and application development.

His current activities, while owner of Pitch Interactive, include work for McDonalds, Kodak and Swiss Colony. His past activities have included co-directing Diphthong ID and interactive direction at Planet Propaganda. Working on award winning projects, ranging from Comm Arts site of the week, How 5 Hot Links, How Top 10 Websites of the month, Webby and more and speaking at a number of conferences, Wes is ready to help anyone with an interactive portfolio in hand.