Hi!

I’m a multi-disciplinary designer passionate about creating conceptual projects for global brands, tech companies, and small businesses. Obsessed with cultural trends, my work provides your company with tangible designs to stand out in the cultural narrative. I aspire to inspire, beautify, and connect the world of business through my work every day.

Whether it’s finding alignment in yoga class or enjoying art at the Whitney, I can’t help but marvel at design everywhere in my life. Music, art, poetry, even plants and trees weave heart, purpose, and results.

From global to local brands, my obsession with cultural trends and discourse translates to impeccable brand deliverables for your company. Where the meticulous meets big picture, you’ll find me - Serra Semi.

I’m ready for our collaboration to have an impact on the world. Are you?

CREATIVE VISION

Evocative Beauty

Capturing the essence of a brand is the most beautiful challenge I’ll always be passionate about. Just like people have their own unique DNA that sets them apart, brands do too. I’m here to distill essence into design that says everything. With me, you’ll find design extends far past emotionally compelling visuals and a slick logo. It’s structure, it’s story mapping, it’s an entire persona.

COMMUNITY

Belonging & Growth

Design is not a solo act. Ideas multiply when we share, so does creativity. We support each other as guides and as company. This connection is key to how I keep developing my craft. I have learned from colleagues, mentors and mentees and I return the exchange just the same, as a mentor, a volunteer, a leader. When we connect, powerful things happen.

LEADERSHIP

Collaborative Synergy

Birds alter patterns mid-flight. Fish change directions in a heartbeat. Well-constructed teams do it naturally. I’m always in awe of any team working together as one organism, and I’m happy to say I’ve been able to build, inspire, and lead them. You can use words like synergy or collaboration all you want, but for me leveraging what each individual brings to the table is ultimately an organic process. It’s one that’s specialized as well as about the big picture. It’s the definition of design.

DIVERSE BACKGROUND

Across Industries

Healthcare. Media. Fashion. Finance. For me, range is the ultimate flex. I’ve jumped into every opportunity I can, and I’ve designed for it all. When I challenge myself with a variety of categories, I see past the boundaries and my design strengths grow stronger. Let me help you find unity in bringing everything all together.

These are some of the companies I’ve had the pleasure of designing beautiful works for.

Case Studies

Hudson River Park Friends

Gatsby Fridays

Intier Spa

Equip Marketing

Neer

Weatherproof Vintage

Tomorrow Networks

Genoa Telepsychiatry

General Fluidics

I’m a big fan of passion projects. They create opportunities to bring to life the inspirations, and cultural details that we collect as curious creators. Gatsby Fridays was born out of two creative directors’ search for a discussion around how to live a fully engaged and productive creative life, myself and my co-host Alex Chimilio.

Our mission is to provide inspiration and guidance to those looking to evolve into the kind of person whose voice matters. We cover subjects we are passionate about from challenges of creatives, design career advice, pop culture, books and movies and more. We write the episode scripts and plan the season together and split the production work.

With Gatsby Fridays, I had the opportunity to bring my creative vision to life in its full potency. Graphics connect to the viewer with established perceptions of Art Deco and the Gatsby era combined with an explosion of botanicals that resonate with breaking out of our shells with the conversations we carry on in the podcast. Bringing out the beauty in being curious, asking and reflecting, in growth. The layered graphic system I established can be expanded in infinite combinations across all design channels over multiple seasons. We have published over 50 episodes in 4 seasons and we are about to kick off a 5th season.

EPISODE TITLES

Staying Creative in the Time of Quarantine
Race and The Creative Profession
Networking for Creatives
How to Hustle You and Your Work
Visual Activism
Self-Care & Creativity
Design Book Club
Love Letter to New York City
First Design Jobs
Mentors and Role Models
Pop Culture Legacy: Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Movie Night: Point Break
The Things We Collect
Chelsea in Three Acts
Immigration & Belonging
Image and Representation
Separating The Art From The Artist
Movie Night: The Matrix
Design Book Club: The Edit
A Day in Nature and Art at Dia:Beacon
Rolling with it
Soho Rhapsody
Reinvention with Hani Furstenberg
Super Duos: The Power of Dynamic Partnerships
Embracing The Unexpected
The Write Practice with Victor LaValle
Pop Culture Legacy: Dolly Parton
The Great Take Back
Burn Notice
Missed Opportunities
The Burden of Creativity
Broken Hearts, Creative Output
Brave New World: A.I. in a Creative Life
Mid ’90s & Beyond with Michael Colovos
Down & Out in the L.E.S.
The Solo Act
Pop Culture Legacy: Keanu Reeves

ANATOMY OF AN EPISODE

“Hello, and welcome to GATSBY FRIDAYS, A show about getting the best out of a creative life from two Creative Directors working around the world and based in New York City.”
“How are you and what are you wearing?” Starting every conversation with this question brings a light hearted note and gets the conversation going.
We each introduce our stance on the topic, bouncing the questions back and forth. Sometimes we go down the same path, sometimes we disagree.
Two close friends with two different personalities and lives always lends itself to an engaging barter.
Sometimes the conversations are fun and lively, but sometimes they’re heavy. It’s important to us that we end with a positive path forward.
In the spirit of our origins, each episode has
a signature cocktail that relates to the episode content.
We always wrap up with call-to-actions to engage our audience on social media.

QUOTES

Our episodes have a pre-designed structure but our conversations are not scripted. The true spirit of our friendship is what makes it an authentic listen. The organic conversation is full of gems we design into social media posts. Quote posts are very well received on LinkedIn where we continue the conversation.

SIGNATURE COCKTAIL

The signature cocktail brings a light hearted end to each episode and is pure content gold. We leverage the recipe as a static post that goes out on Instagram on Saturday afternoons, the day after our episode drops. We also film making of the recipe and post as stories. The recipe stories are some of our most popular content.