About

Karen Wegehenkel is a freelance illustrator and Web/Graphic Designer. Her work is clean, simple and elegant. She is striving for easy to look at, fun illustrations, and an easy and good user experience in her designs. If you are interested in her work or just want to know more, please drop her an email under karen@wegehenkel.com (or use our form).

Work Experience

02/2002 – present

Self employed, Seattle and Bellevue, WA

• Design icons (i.e. 38 different icons for the new WAC house map)
• Execute web sites from planning, design and programming to search engine optimization and entry and maintenance
• Illustrated children's book and developed other illustrations
• Provide graphic design services to clients including design of brochures, logos and business cards

1/1999 – 02/2002

Screen Designer, Amazon.de, Munich, Germany

• Created illustrations/icons for Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.fr resulting in a more harmonized look of the European sites
• Developed guidelines for editorial images, resulting in faster creation times and a more unified look
• Designed new web pages for Amazon stores, orderpipeline and other to improve recent design
• Worked closely with developers, project managers, editors and the marketing department
• Provided graphic design services to marketing department to improve implementation of guidelines in printing material

10/1998 – 07/1999

Graphic Design Intern, Amazon.com, Seattle, WA and Regensburg, Germany

• Created E-Cards, including illustrations and animations for Amazon.com
• Edited and optimized existing E-Card images, including thumbnail creation and entry in database
• Assisted setting up product photo shoots for Amazon.com toys department, edited and optimized images including cropping, color corrections and sharpness

Education

02/2007-ongoing

Bellevue Community College (Bellevue, WA)
Course on Drawing in Color

09/2006-12/2006

Bellevue Community College (Bellevue, WA)
Course on Children's Book Illustration

09/2005-12/2005

Bellevue Community College (Bellevue, WA)
Course on Advanced Photography Techniques

02/2001-10/2003

HTK Online, Hamburg (Germany)
Graphic Design

10/1995-03/2000

Technical University, Dresden (Germany)
German Studies, Psychology, Communication Science

08/1989-07/1993

Manufactory for Porcelain, Meissen (Germany)
Craftsman: Porcelain Sculptor ("Bossierer")

Skills

Computer Skills:
Expert skills in Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop
Advanced skills in Macromedia Dreamweaver and Fireworks
Intermediate Skills in Adobe InDesign, Microsoft Word and Excel
CSS skills

Language Skills:
fluent in German and English

Other Skills
drawing, painting, sculpting, photography

Personal Stuff

I was born in Pirna, Germany (that's near Dresden in the eastern part), and moved to the US in 2002. Now I live in Bellevue, just outside of Seattle with my husband and little daughter (born in 2004), and enjoy it very much. If you are German and new in the area, drop me a line, and I can probably help you in getting connected.

My second passion (other than design) are horses. I own a Trakehner Arabian mare, and love to be out in nature and around horses. They can teach us so much. Feel the same way? Please email me, I would love to hear from you!