It had always been there, hidden in plain sight—waiting for me to notice.

Hi, I'm Ella, a senior at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago studying Visual Communication Design. My path to design wasn’t straightforward; it was more like uncovering a hidden pattern that only made sense looking back.

Growing up in India, I played national-level soccer often on my school’s boys’ team, not to prove a point, but simply because that was the only way to compete. Navigating contradictions became second nature: strong yet approachable, competitive not aggressive. Soccer taught me how to creatively strategize, adapt quickly without shrinking myself, and to always find the gap. Design works exactly the same way.

When COVID cleared the soccer fields, I stumbled into design by chance, designing presentation decks and  brochures for a corporate training company without any formal instruction. Through practical experimentation, intuition became my method. Each project was messy, curious, and distinctly mine. SAIC recognized this potential and taught me how to turn intuition into rigorous, thoughtful solutions.

Here, I've learned that truly great ideas don't just solve stated problems. They shift perspectives, opening new possibilities and challenge our thinking and actions. Practice makes perfect, but it rarely makes new. Design isn’t about rearranging what already exists; it's about seeing what’s missing and bringing it to life. Great design leaves people thinking, “I wish I'd thought of that.”

At the same time, I know great ideas don’t happen in isolation. They come from collaboration, trust, and playing to each other’s strengths. That’s the team-first mindset I bring to every project—curious, strategic, driven and eager to contribute to something bigger than myself.