Tanja Dekker illustration and publishing

The twikga name stands for my illustrations and the heritage of the twikga books. I was born in 1967 and grew up in the north of Holland. After studying business administration in Rotterdam I worked in marketing and e-commerce for 10 years. During that time my work evolved around the business side of advertising design, packaging and shopping interfaces. When my husband Willem and I moved to Hamburg in 2003, I decided it was time for a career change and went to art school to study illustration design. The book Tata & Squack – The Big Journey was my graduation project.

In 2010 I founded a publishing company named twikga Verlag GmbH, which was closed down in 2016 when we decided to move back to Holland. Hence the twikga name now stands for the heritage of the twikga books and the illustrations of Tanja Dekker. Illustrating has not been my main focus during recent years, but twikga is on the move again!

Our relocation to Holland took a few years, because we decided to design and build our own house. For me this was a dream come true and a challenge because I am not an architect. We moved into our new house in 2019 and had just started to settle in when the corona pandemic grounded us in 2020. A good time to go through my picture archives and redesign our websites.

I am looking forward to illustrating again. A lot of my work is a mix of photographs, drawings and collages. Most of the photos were taken by Willem and me during our safaris in Africa. Have a look under stories for the making of the twikga books and the work in progress