Katharine Friedgen

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Wanderlust: Cork, Ireland

The English Market Cork actually reminded me of Reading Terminal Market in Philadelphia with it’s many and varied stalls. From bakers and grocers to butchers and fishmongers, there really wasn’t a single food you couldn’t find in this market. And what a fun place to walk around and explore with a camera.

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Wanderlust: Killarney National Park, Ireland

We spent an entire day hiking, biking, and strolling past some amazing examples of nature’s beauty. From woods and hills, to waterfalls and streams. If I was in a disney movie, there would have been many a song sung here. 

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Wanderlust: The Cliffs of Moher

As Spring slowly eeks it’s way past a lingering winter, I can’t help but reminisce about my time in Ireland last summer. One of my favorites stops along our journey was to the Cliffs of Moher, or for any Princess Bride fans out there: “The Cliffs of Insanity!”

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Wanderlust: Galway, Ireland

While I’ve read many books set in Ireland, before this past summer, I had never been there. As we continued our European trip, my family and I started our Irish tour in Galway.Full of seaside beauty, old town quaintness, and welcoming pubs – we had a marvelous time.

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Wanderlust: Berlin (Plötzensee)

Our next stop in Berlin was to camp with friends near a glacier lake, Plötzensee. We came for our friend’s wedding which was gorgeous and so much fun. The campsite was full of beautiful flowers, artistic arrangements, and really was the best location to go camping.

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Wanderlust: Berlin (Gartnerei & Olympischer Platz)

My sisters, brother-in-law, nephew and I went on a trip to Europe this past summer, which was an incredible experience. I started my documentation of our trip once we got to Germany. We went to Berlin, specifically the area near the Olympic stadium where they had the 1936 Olympics.

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Engagement Portraits: Candace & Rich

Looking back on this past year’s projects has made me realize how many fun assignments I had and how lucky I’ve been to work with such great people. My very dear friend Candace got engaged in 2016 and I was so honored that she and Rich asked me to do their engagement portraits.

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Women’s March on Washington

On January 21st I participated in one of the most inspiring and fulfilling events of my life. I travelled down from Philadelphia with two of my closest friends and joined over 500,000 women, men, and children in the Women’s March on Washington. I heard about the event from my friends after many of them shared the event over Facebook and was immediately excited to participate in a march that supports such a positive and proactive vision: We stand together in solidarity with our partners and children for the protection of our rights, our safety, our health, and our families – recognizing that our vibrant and diverse communities are the strength of our country.*

See all photos and read more. . . 

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Gift Guide 2016: For the Techie in Your Life

For the Designer

They constantly complain or applaud designs you see as you walk down the street. Or they audibly groan when they see incorrect kerning. Maybe you have an inside joke with them about silly typefaces. Whatever the case, you know your designer lives and breathes this stuff. So get them something that shows you know them.

For the Developer

They randomly jump up from some conversation or TV show or whatever in order to grab their computer and solve a work problem. They speak more in animated gifs than words. They are more than likely a gamer. They are the developer or engineer in your life. Here are a few gifts specifically chosen for them.

See all gift recommendations

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Gift Guide 2016: For the Photographer in Your Life

Do you have a photography-obsessed friend? A camera collecting relative? Or you are simply buying for a secret santa and the only thing you know about the person is that they sometimes take photos on their phone? Never fear, this list will help you find the perfect gift (or gifts!) for the photographer in your life.

See the gift lists

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Learning to code without leaving your couch

Everyday you’ll find articles telling you developers should learn design, and ones asking if designers should learn to code. There are articles explaining why people shouldn’t learn to code and ones telling you not to listen to anyone saying what you can and can’t do (a great article in my opinion). Regardless of what “other people” think you should or shouldn’t do, the question posed really should be: Do you want to code? If the answer to that question is yes, then it’s never been easier to educate, test-out, try and learn coding from the comfort of your own home — even from the comfort of your phone! In this post I want to share several different apps and sites that have made it easy for me to dive into new languages, refresh on old languages, and plan to learn other languages.

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Wanderlust: West Virginia

Every year, my college friends and I pull a US State out of a hat and plan a trip there. We started this after realizing how much of our country we haven’t seen, and how many adventures are just waiting to be had.

We go on a trip and on the last night of the trip we pull a state from the hat. Last year, I was the newbie to this tradition and so it was up to me to pick the next #GirlsWeekend location. The location I picked? West Virginia.

After a year of researching, planning, and asking people their recommendations we planned our trip to the historic Harpers Ferry. I lived in Maryland for many years, but never went to West Virginia so I was excited to see what we’d find. 

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(via Wanderlust: Alcatraz)

Wanderlust: Alcatraz

Cutting back to my time on the west coast – we finally made our way to San Francisco. I have family that lives in the city and I love coming to visit a city that is wholly different from my own town of Philadelphia. When Emily and I visited, we wanted to make sure we saw places she’d never seen before. Well, after forcing her to watch The Rock (which she loved), I told her we had to see Alcatraz.

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Redesign 2016: New Beginnings

WHAT’S OLD IS NEW AGAIN . . . AND AGAIN

Redesigning my website always feels like when someone asks me what my favorite movie is or who my favorite artist is, etc. I have to pick one thing to represent myself?  That’s so limiting! To solve that feeling of design claustrophobia, I usually redesign my portfolio completely every year. I’ve had a professional website since 2011 and without fail, every year I redesign and redevelop how it looks, how it’s shaped, the UX flow and design ephemera for that year.

2016 was a huge year of growth for me in my professional work. I worked on projects that employ new web standards and practices. Using this knowledge I’ve applied new style standards and atomic design and development, BEM specificity, and I became extremely comfortable using Github to improve my file versioning and Gulp to compile and streamline my SCSS workflow. With all these tools at my disposal I knew this year my portfolio redesign strategy had to be different. I wanted to make it so that I don’t have to tear down and ditch my old sites as I go forward, but rather build them with a structure that’s flexible for future iterations, improvements, extensions and enhancements.

Before I could even begin to think about the design of my new site I knew I had to treat my site like any other project I would take on – by using my design and development workflow. My workflow starts with research of the “client”, the product and the customer or user. Next would be mood boards and sketching. Then would come mocks and development exploration. And finally, development implementation.

Read full case study  |  See Portfolio

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Wanderlust: Big Sur

After an amazing visit to LA, Venice, and Malibu, it was finally time for Emily and I to travel up the coast to San Francisco. Everyone had told us to drive up the coast, so even though I’m really not a height person, we did just that.

Emily – the champ of the day since she drove the 10 hours single-handedly – had us put on some tunes and we began our journey through the Los Padres National Forest. We passed several farms before getting close enough to stop and walk on the beach. We saw seagulls and elephant seals – not to mention the incredible juxtaposition of having a steep cliff to your left and giant mountains on your right.

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Wanderlust: The Warner Brother’s Tour

I had to recommend one “tourist” thing to do while visiting Los Angeles, I would tell people to go take the Warner Brother’s Studio Tour. I didn’t want to see celebrities or their homes or expensive stores, but going on this tour hit all my favorite aspects of being a tourist. We learned about the history of the area: the tour talks about and walks you through all these permanent sets that have been in movies since they started making movies. 

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Wanderlust: Malibu Beach

Next up in the Adventures of Emily & Katie in California: we took the route through the mountains to get to Malibu Beach. On the way down we made many a pit stop to take in the various views. Beautiful vistas, vivid colors, and rocky, coastal masterpieces.

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