FROM helping to build the very first Muhlenberg.edu as a student worker TO 27 years of collaborating with clients on branding and design via her own creative agency
Kristen Yngve ’00, who was an art and English major at Muhlenberg, was interested in graphic design as a student. At the time, the College did not offer graphic design courses, but when Yngve was interviewing for student employment in the Office of Information Technology, she mentioned her interest. The office encouraged her to work alongside Shawn McKnight ’98 in building the first ever College website and getting hands-on experience in design, coding and other suddenly in-demand skills. She served as a student webmaster throughout the rest of her time at Muhlenberg.
“There were small businesses in town who reached out saying, ‘Hey, I really need a website. Do you know anyone?’ So, while I was a student, I was able to start a freelance business and grow it into my full-time business,” Yngve says.
Yngve also learned programs like Photoshop and QuarkXPress as a student through her work on the campus art and literary magazine MUSES. Muhlenberg partnered with a local designer named Lynne Septon, who assisted students with layout and design for MUSES and The Muhlenberg Weekly for decades.
“She taught me how to properly prepare design work to be printed,” Yngve says. “She quickly became my mentor, teaching me the art and business of being an independent businesswoman.”
“Muhlenberg set me up for success by teaching me the power of words, images and transdisciplinary thinking — and giving me the experiences to put that thinking into practice.”
—Kristen Yngve ’00
What drew Yngve to Muhlenberg was the Dana Scholars honors program: “That is a program that I still credit for nurturing the way that I show up,” says Yngve, who co-curated an exhibit on West African ritual art objects with the Martin Art Gallery to fulfill the program’s internship requirement. “What I constantly hear from people who have hired me is that they like the way that I think. It’s the ability to synthesize. It’s the ability to practice empathy. It’s the ability to listen and notice, to think independently and work collaboratively. I credit the Dana program for a lot of that.”
The first logo Yngve ever designed, for Muhlenberg’s improv comedy troupe Uninvited Guests, whose members went on to found A Broken Umbrella Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut
For the past six years, Yngve has worked at Babson College’s Institute for Social Innovation on thought leadership and strategic engagement. With her upcoming move to Wilmington, North Carolina, she’ll return to being a full-time solopreneur. Over the decades, she has developed a niche “working with the small, smart and mighty”— and a balance between her work and her other interests (art and gardening, to name two).
Yngve also designed the Broken Umbrella logo in 2009, which became the first logo design she had published in the international LogoLounge design books.
“Being an entrepreneur can be demanding, but you don’t have to be a workaholic. You can be intentional with both your day-to-day life and the scope of your work,” she says. “I’m grateful to have built a career and life that I love, working as a creative partner to so many innovative, values-driven leaders. Muhlenberg set me up for success by teaching me the power of words, images and transdisciplinary thinking — and giving me the experiences to put that thinking into practice.”
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