Hi, I'm Ella.
And design is just another way I move through the world, with fascination, joy, and a desire to connect.
I didn’t always know I’d become a designer. But from an early age, I was obsessed with stories , reading them, chasing them, making them.
I’m forever grateful to my parents for the bedtime stories they read to me every night. They gave me my first glimpse into a world full of possibility.
In the fall of 2021, I started out at Emory University, planning to study psychology, drawn to how people think, feel, and behave. And in many ways, I got what I came for. I was surrounded by brilliant thinkers, great peers, and a beautiful campus. I was thriving, at least on paper.
But, in reality I had a deep desire to create. To not just understand meaning, but to make my own. I wanted to take everything I was learning about influence, free will, and human behaviour, and put it into action. Design became the place where I could do that.
I’m adaptable, and I don’t believe in settling. So I trusted that instinct and transferred to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. There, I was able to bring my research mindset into creative problem solving.
Now, it’s how I approach every design problem. I think of strategy as a form of storytelling, understanding why something matters, and how to make it resonate. At SAIC, I’ve learned to turn instinct into insight, pairing emotion with rigor and transforming big ideas into compelling visual systems.
Growing up in India, I played soccer at the national level. I started out on my school’s boys’ team, not to make a statement, but because it was the only way to compete. Navigating contradictions became second nature: strong yet approachable, competitive but not too aggressive.
Soccer taught me how to read the field, find the gap, and move with intention.
Branding isn’t all that different.
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I believe everything we do shapes us, and everything that has shaped us determines what we do.
For a long time, I thought being an athlete and being an artist were two separate paths. I believed those lines were clear, even fixed. And believe me, I love sports. I’ll play anything I can get my hands or feet on. I pick up new games quickly because I’ve played so many.
But only recently did I realize how much that world shaped the way I move through life, literally and otherwise. Sports taught me to adapt, to be curious, to connect with all kinds of people. It taught me teamwork, discipline, and how to find rhythm in motion.
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Looking back, nothing feels random. Even the smallest moments have shaped my perspective. Patterns that once felt like coincidence now feel like design.
That’s what drives how I work. I don’t start with viusal inspiration. I start with context. I ask questions, gather references, and follow the thread of whatever fascinates me next. Practicing what already exists might make perfect. But it doesn’t make something new.
Often, that thread leads me into books. Here’s what I’ve read this year. Stories, ideas, and voices that have deeply influenced my design work.
Music is my favorite kind of time travel. It scores my mornings, powers my runs, and turns my kitchen into a dance floor.
I average about 42 days of listening a year, which is both alarming and completely on brand.
Here are a few albums I keep coming back to. Some are new. Some are old. But they all make me feel connected to something much bigger.
Growing up in India, food was my family’s love language, both in both preparation and consumption. When I moved away from home, I had to rebuild that for myself.
I taught myself to cook. At first, I followed recipes obsessively. Now, it’s completely intuitive.
And I still send my mom a photo of every meal I make.
These are the little bits and pieces of me. Every experience shapes how I design. Nothing exists in isolation.