Pixiepencil
JANE ZIMMERMANN

Children´s Books & Characters

Hi, I am an illustrator, artist and designer based in Tromsø, Norway. My life and work have taken me all around the world, allowing me to experience many different cultures, beautiful peopl, and sights that have inspired my illustrations a lot.

As a children’s illustrator, I love quirky and cute characters, animals, mangas, monsters, muted colours, big eyes and polka dots. I mostly create my little worlds and characters digitally, but sometimes also use ink and draw by hand.

I hope you like my little weird and wonderful world and will find something in it that sparks your imagination. If you would like us to be creative together or have any other questions, please get in touch with me via jane(at)pixiepencil.com anytime and I will get back to you.

More about me

Ever since I can remember I have had pens and brushes in my hand and was doodling something, imagining new worlds and characters in all shapes and sizes. Until today, my personal and professional life have felt like a continuous unfolding of the inevitable, a weaving together of my natural passion for drawing with my curiosity and wonderment for the world. I feel deeply grateful for all the things I have learned and experienced on this journey so far and often find it hard to believe that the next exciting adventure is somehow always right around the corner.

After training in visual communications and marketing in Germany, I initially worked in large international advertisement and digital agencies for several years before starting uforepublic.com my own boutique design agency with one of my closest friends and colleagues. Over our 10 years in Germany, we’ve had the pleasure of developing brand identities, websites, logos, icons, animations, marketing material, online games, and more for an incredibly diverse array of clients including the RBS Royal Bank of Scotland, Miele, AT&T, Sportswear International Magazine, Deutsche Bank, Union Investment, several German municipalities, and dozens of smaller clients from all around the world. 

In the beginning of 2009, we decided to take a big leap of fate and move our business to the glistering city of Hong Kong, setting up shop in its beating heart with a bit of a twist by adding the city’s first-ever gallery for low-brow and graffiti art to our business. After featuring some of my artworks in the opening vernissage, I continued as the gallery’s director and curated exhibitions with artists from Australia, the Netherlands, Hong Kong, Italy, and Japan. At the same time, we continued to expand our design work with local and international clients like the Hong Kong Government, Miele Hong Kong, the German-Swiss International School and many more. 

Three years later, I followed up that leap of fate with a leap of love and moved to New Zealand to be with my boyfriend, who is now also my husband and partner in life and crime. Some part of my heart still lives in this beautiful country at the end of the world, with its incredible rain forests, endless shoreline, and astonishing flora and fauna. After freelancing for international giants like FCB and smaller boutique design agencies in Auckland, I found myself expanded my skills in an agency specializing in spatial and museum design, storytelling, and visitor experience. But the real difference that New Zealand made was to explode my passion for children’s illustration on the one hand, and both realistic and fictional botanical, entomological, avian, and ecological art on the other, and I have been pouring loads of time and heart into these ever since.  

With jumping across continents and oceans now nearly a habit, my husband and I moved to Norway in 2019 and are loving our life between the ocean, mountains, and fjords up here in the Arctic circle. Here, I work as an independent designer, illustrator, and artist, to combine the entire breadth and wealth of my experience into children’s books and illustrations, brand, packaging, and spatial design, ecological science and fiction art, as well as illustration-based design and storytelling. 

If you read my story and look at all the diverse work I’ve done, you might feel like it is hard to pin me down, and that’s ok. I don’t like to feel constrained, and I don’t want anyone else to feel like that either. The truth is that I’ve found nothing but strength in the wealth of skills and experiences I have gained over the years and the range and flexibility that I have developed as a result. If you want to work with me, you can rest assured that I will not make it about me, but use all of my skills and experience to understand what it is that you would like to see, feel and express. And we will have fun in the process of making this a reality together, which is easily as important as the result itself, because adventures are not defined by the places they take us to, but the journey that gets us there and the people we travel with. 

Published children’s books

Hedgie`s Bitcoin Story, by Jeff McLean

Little Creatures from the Sea, by Guiliana Panierie &
Roerta Cassani, AKMA Project

Meet Nina & Berry, by Fabio Satri & AKMA Project

Little Phantom, by Jil Atkins Ransom Publishing

The Lady with the Lamp, by Stephen Rickard Ransom Publishing

Bill Fell, by Stephen Rickard Ransom Publishing

Brownie the Bear, by Filip Maric

The Gigantic Turnip, by Stephen Rickard Ransom Publishing

Looking for Pets, by Stephen Rickard Ransom Publishing

A Wish for a Fish, by Jil Atkins Ransom Publishing

Rin to the Sun, by Stephen Rickard Ransom Publishing

The Adventures of Cuppy the Crab, by David Fountain

Exhibitions

Annual Artist for Conservation Exhibition
2022 Canada

Annual Artist for Conservation Exhibition
2021 Canada

For the Love of Botanicals
2021 New Zealand

Annual Artist for Conservation Exhibition
2020 Canada

Big Show of Little Botanical Works
2020 New Zealand

Botanical Exhibtion SpaceStudioGallery
2020 New Zealand

Margaret Flockton Award Exhibition
2020 Australia

Solo Exhibition Mairangi Arts Center
2019 New Zealand

World Wide Botanical Illustration Exhibition
2018 New Zealand

WORKSHOPS
Notable clients

Artic Auditories Hydrospheres in the High North www.arcticauditories.com

AKMA-Project www.akma-project.com

Ransom Publishing, UK

Pesko Sport AG, Switzerland

Auckland Kindergarten Association, New Zealand

KINZ Daycare, New Zealand

Environmental Physiotherapy

Meyer Burger Solarpanels, Germany

Australian Museum, Sydney

Museum of Transport and Technology, Auckland,
New Zealand

Chelsea Sugar Factory, Auckland, New Zealand

ZGF Center for Societal Progress, Frankfurt, Germany

RBS Royal Bank of Scotland, Germany

Deutsche Bank, Germany

Miele, Hong Kong & Germany

Union Investment, Germany

AT&T, Dallas TX, USA

Hong Kong Government

Speights Brewery, Dunedin, New Zealand

Carl’s Jr, New Zealand

SeaLink Ferries, New Zealand 

Awards

Red Award
Sushi Ninja Shop 2018 New Zealand

Best Design Award Finalist
Tourism Holdings Annual Report 2015 New Zealand

Best Design Award Finalist
Auckland Kindergarten Branding 2014 New Zealand

 

ARTIST IN RESIDENCE

May 2022 RV Kronprins Haakon akma-project.com
(Norwegian icebreaking polar research vessel)

April 2923 EGU General Assembly 2023 egu23.eu

Check out some of my other work

ORGANISATIONAL MEMBERSHIPS