About Jason Simanek

(shi-'mä-nik)

I am a web strategist/manager/designer/developer currently located in Nebraska. Raised near – but not in – a barn, I am a descendant of a long line of Nebraska farmers and Czech peasants. Of my 8 siblings, a brother and sister are graphic designers. None of them are farmers.

After completing college degrees in Fine Art and Graphic Design and working as a designer for several years, I discovered and pursued an interest in web design and development. After a lot of self-education, I found opportunities to apply what I had learned about the web to my full-time design positions.

Since 2002 I have been working as a full-time print designer, web designer, or – more recently – a web manager and strategist. Most of my professional experience has been focused on in-house creative design, marketing and a wide array of computer-related problem solving which includes:

What’s up with your last name?

The name Simanek is of Czech origin. The pronunciation shown above is the result of certain accent marks that were dropped as my ancestors assimilated into the U.S. culture.

The name is correctly written: Šimánek

The little ‘v’ above the ‘S’ is called a háček or hachek although Unicode calls it a ‘caron’. Wikipedia has some good background on the use of this diacritic as well as the Czech language itself.