Mikaela Bernhardt is a Bay Area artist and placemaker operating as Mikaela Karthik Design, based in the San Francisco Bay Area, California. Her practice spans surface pattern design, murals, and hand-lettered signage for commercial and residential spaces. Pattern licensing for fabric, textiles, children's apparel, wallpaper, and home interiors is a documented service alongside mural commissions. She has a dual cultural background - San Francisco and Chennai - which informs her motif vocabulary.

The portfolio features botanical and nature-inspired work with a warm, vibrant palette. Her pattern vocabulary draws on botanicals, abstract organic forms, and Indian-inspired decorative motifs, balanced between lush maximalism and purposeful composition. Color use is warm and saturated across the selected pattern images.

Mikaela works in hand painting, hand lettering, and sign painting, translating these into surface pattern and mural contexts. Her background in landscape architecture provides a spatial and structural sensibility. Documented skills: painting, hand lettering, pattern design, market adaptation, and client collaboration.

Primary target markets documented on her website: fabric and textiles, children's apparel, wallpaper, and home interiors. She also operates in the commercial and residential mural market across the San Francisco Bay Area, with documented projects including BART station streetscapes, schools, and mixed-use retail developments.

Mikaela worked in the architecture and engineering industry at design firms Gates+Associates and WRT Inc., contributing to projects including BART streetscapes, schools, mixed-use commercial hubs, and large-scale residential developments. She transitioned from professional landscape architecture practice into a creative practice centred on murals, placemaking, and surface pattern design.

The portfolio features a focus on botanical and organic motifs, with Indian-inspired decorative elements running through the pattern vocabulary. The portfolio shows her work applied to commercial and residential wall installations as mural-scale surface design.