It’s Time to Meet Siho!

At Designity, our creative community is as diverse as the designs they bring to life every day.

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Some talented Creatives come from design agency or freelance backgrounds, some come from entirely different industries, and some find their way here from paths that are so unique that might surprise you!

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Today, we’re excited to introduce you to one of these amazingly unique Creatives today! 

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From captivating audiences as a soap opera and Off-Broadway actress to wowing clients as a graphic designer and voiceover artist, Australian-born Creative, Siho E. is channeling that same passion she has for the stage to every design and voiceover project she works on!

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So, if you’re ready to hear how Siho made the jump from actress to Designity star, we’re ready to fill you in. Pull up a chair and get comfortable because it’s time to meet Siho!

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How did you get into graphic design? What’s your origin story?

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It’s hard to say. My main profession that I really went to college for was acting.

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I’ve been an actor for a long time; it’s maybe been 30 years? I started acting in my teens. I came to New York in the early 2000s to go to acting school and I graduated and ended up staying in the United States in New York and was able to live here. 

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But, as always, any acting or kind of performing arts kind of work is not steady, so I wanted to find another creative outlet that I could do and also earn money on a more regular basis.

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My mother, in fact, was a graphic designer in Japan (I’m half Japanese), and that was back in the day before computers. So, she drew everything and she had a drafting table and all of that stuff. So, it's kind of been, I guess, in my blood.

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There was a school in New York called Shillington which, coincidentally enough, is an Australian school, which is where I'm from. It was more intensive where you could earn an associates degree or a certificate in graphic design in a year, and I did it kind of part-time since I had other work and things like that. So, that's what I did.

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I went there, I applied, I got in, and then I graduated with a portfolio and then started working. That was 12 years ago. 

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So, you were an actor? What kind of acting did you do?

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In Australia, I was on a soap opera called Neighbours for a little while; it’s very famous in Australia. Margot Robbie was in it for a long time. I didn’t meet her because she was way after I left, but there’s actually episodes on Amazon. So, if people want to watch it, you might see me! I played a schoolgirl named Cara and I wasn’t very nice; I was kind of a mean girl.  

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So, I did TV and some short films in Australia. Here in New York. I've done theater, Off-Broadway and Off-Off Broadway.

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Mostly now, I do voiceover. I do a lot of voiceovers for commercials, video games, animation. I was a voice on Overwatch, which is a video game. And then recently I did a voice for this VR game, Ghostbusters, and then I do a lot of audio books as well. 

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Acting is a weird living, but so is graphic design sometimes!

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What was your first creative-related job?

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It was an agency job. 

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I ended up getting placed in a PR agency that was part of Publicis. It was called MSL Group, and it was one of my first big in-house design jobs.

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I learned a lot. PR is interesting. There's tight deadlines, there's a lot of pitching for new business, especially with the agency that I was with; they were always trying to find new business. What was really funny was — because PR people try and get news out there or anything that has to do with their brand, they're going to put it out there and try and get eyes on it or people to listen to things.

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How did your career take you from a PR agency to Designity?

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I worked there for a little while and then I jumped to an in-house marketing department for a major bank. I did that for a little while, and then I got really sick; I got cancer.

I'm fine now, but that kind of made me reassess and look at stuff, and I didn't want to work in an office anymore. 

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I was going through treatments, and I kind of wanted to be able to have flexibility to be able to work from home or work from wherever I wanted to. 

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And being an actor and an artist, you're always used to going to new places and things like that.  And I missed that ‘cause I had started working in offices, and so when COVID happened, I got sick and left my job. I was figuring out what to do and then I found Designity on LinkedIn.

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Coincidentally enough, Joey and I used to work together at the PR agency. And he'd left before I left, maybe a year or nine months or something before I left the place. And I remembered him ‘cause we were Facebook friends, so I saw that he worked there and I was like, "If he works there, it must be legit, and it's a good place." 

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So, I applied and that's history, I guess.

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What is your favorite kind of project to take on?

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Definitely ones where you get to collaborate with a client. 

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And they don't have to really be kind of sexy jobs like ads or cool animation or video. It can be simple as a report or something or a presentation or a template. But just being able to talk to the client and figure out what they want and then working together to come up with the best solution for what they need is my favorite.

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Any kind of collaboration is really fun.

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Do you have a type of project that really challenges you?

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No, not particularly.

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Sometimes, brainstorming an idea might be initially hard, but once you get into it, it's kind of fun. 

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I think maybe there's sometimes as a graphic designer you can get into more kind of production design which is templating and other stuff that's very formulaic and that can be challenging. It can be a little boring too, as it doesn't stretch your creative muscle as much but I don't mind it.

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Sometimes it's nice to kind of zone out and just do a layout or just recolor a document so it's for a different brand or something like that. Sometimes you need it for your brain. 

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What is your favorite thing about working at Designity?

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The flexibility and also the different kinds of clients.

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There's so many. I've worked with Midland and I’m not necessarily doing design but I'm doing kind of social media campaign management and campaign building, which is really something I haven't done a lot of and I'm excited to do that.

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Just being able to stretch my skills in different ways has been really satisfying.  And just working on different ranges of clients, like Midland — they make hoses and brass bits — and then I'm doing some work for a high-end luxury boating company so, it's a real range of clients. In PR, you kind of got that, but in an agency world, sometimes you're just working on one client for years, so I think it's really fun and it feels like it kind of stretches my skills and my portfolio and my experience which I think is great. 

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How do you keep yourself up to date with design trends?

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Just being on newsletters for AIGA or something like that. Also just getting out in the world and seeing a lot of stuff — I live on the Upper West Side in Manhattan.

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I'm really lucky ‘cause I can visit places. I don't know if it's still open, but there used to be The Art Director's Guild. They used to have a space here in New York where you could go and visit. 

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We have MoMA (The Museum of Modern Art) which has an amazing design wing where they showcase a lot of interesting design work. Cooper Hewitt is another place in New York that also highlights a lot of design and kind of graphic design-type stuff as well. It's a museum but I think there's a college too, so they have a lot of exhibits. Like I saw a Saul Bass exhibit there years ago, which was amazing; you got to see the process of his work and it's also old school ‘cause you cut out stuff and paste it which was really cool.

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 So, yeah, just being in New York, I feel like I have a little bit of an advantage of being able to see the stuff that's setting the trend for the rest of the world. 

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What do you like to do when you’re not working?

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Hang out with my friends.

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I also write screenplays. I went to UCLA during COVID; they have a professional screenwriting program, so I did that. I like to write and then walk around New York and visit places in New York. 

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And travel! I like to travel. It's been a little hard. It can get expensive, but I really love to travel.

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My favorite place was and is Italy. I love Italy. I think it's beautiful and everybody there is beautiful and just the lifestyle; I could live that lifestyle where you have a nap in the middle of the day.

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And I have a really good friend who's working on her Italian citizenship. So, I'm like, “hurry and go through so I can visit you! I do want to visit India. It's on a bucket list. And Paris. I've never been there.

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Do you have any words of inspiration for aspiring creatives?

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I just want to say keep going. If it feels right, it probably is.

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And then sometimes I also find that what scares you is actually you telling yourself that you should do this. So, do the scary thing. Don't be afraid of the scary thing because, in the long run, it ends up not being that scary at all. 

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It's actually quite amazing. You can have an amazing experience if you just try that scary thing. 

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That's what I say, because going into design was a little scary for me at the time, because I didn't know what I was getting into and what it would do. But it was a good leap, I have to say!

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So, do the scary thing.