Tech: 12 apps that just won Apple's most prestigious design award (AAPL)

Here are this year's winners of Apple's design awards.

Apple revealed the winners of its prestigious Design Awards in a small ceremony at its annual conference on Wednesday.

These awards go to apps that Apple likes because they're new, useful, or particularly beautiful. It's one of the biggest awards that Apple gives to its app developers.

Unlike Apple's end-of-year awards list, these apps often aren't super popular yet, and usually take advantage of new Apple capabilities or highlight emerging trends in app design.

Sometimes, Apple even buys the companies behind apps that have won these awards.

Here are this year's winners. We'll start with the apps then move onto the games:

Lake, a beautiful coloring app that works well with Apple's stylus, Pencil

Price: Free, but with in-app purchases.

Bear, an elegant note-taking app

Price: Free, but the pro version is a $14.99 annual subscription.

Kitchen Stories, a beautiful cooking app that Apple CEO Tim Cook likes

Price: Free with in-app purchases.

Here's what it looks like on an Apple TV:

Things 3, a fully-featured to-do list and productivity system

Price: $9.99.

Elk, a beautiful currency conversion app with an Apple Watch version

Price: Free for 14 days. Full version is a $3.99 in-app purchase.

Enlight, a high-performance photo editor for iPhones

Price: $3.99.

AirMail 3, an email client with Siri support

Price: $3.99 for iPhone, $9.99 for Mac.

Blackbox, a beautiful puzzle game

Price: Free.

Splitter Critters, a puzzle game for kids and adults

Price: $2.99.

Mushroom 11, a dark and beautiful platforming game

Price: $4.99.

Old Man's Journey, an adventure game best on iPad

Price: $4.99.

Severed, an intense sword-fighting game.

Price: $2.99.

Here are this year's winners of Apple's design awards. Read Full Story