mail@anjelafreyja.com

Anjela Freyja

Anjela Freyja is a New York City based creative director and designer who has been shaping visual identities and building brand worlds for fifteen years. 
Her practice extends into writing and content creation where she analyzes art, design, and fashion, continuously engaging in cultural dialogue with her growing audience.

JOAN Creative Brand Identity Design
JOAN Studios is a full service creative production house and a branch of JOAN Creative.  Its identity is inspired by gaffer tape, a staple of film sets, used here as both logo and visual device. A vibrant green drawn from production green screens and the minimal typography of the parent brand create a system that reflects the studio’s spirit: creative, precise, and crafted.
Artificial Objects
Artificial Objects is a research and design project exploring how generative AI can expand the creative process. Trained on 20th-century industrial design, the AI models reinterpret the world entirely through furniture, producing both absurd and inspired forms—from origami chairs to reimagined accessible furniture. Through an iterative exchange between human and machine, the ideas evolve from text prompts to visual sketches and finally to physical prototypes. 
Fifteen Years of Type
Fifteen Years of Type is an evolving archive that documents the trajectory of my typographic practice over a decade and a half. Building on 10 Years of Type (2020), this new iteration showcases five additional years of explorations, experiments, and commissioned work—reflecting how my craft, voice, and career have expanded. Presented as a visual time capsule, the project transforms years of design into a single immersive wall of type. It serves as a celebration of persistence, passion, and the quiet discipline behind a life's work in letters.
eBay Fashion
eBay Fashion 2024 reimagines the shopping experience by turning the platform’s user interface into the heart of the campaign. Rooted in the excitement of searching and discovering the unexpected, the design transforms functional UI moments—typing, scrolling, clicking—into expressive visual language. Balancing precision with playfulness, the campaign brought a renewed sense of style and cultural relevance to eBay, positioning it once again as a leader in the vintage and secondhand fashion space.
Nia Centre for the Arts
Nia Centre for the Arts is a Toronto-based organization dedicated to supporting emerging Black artists and celebrating Canada’s African diaspora. For the opening of its first permanent space, the brand identity was designed to balance institutional strength with cultural warmth. The rising sun logo symbolizes optimism and homecoming, while a Swiss-inspired typographic system and the use of PP Neue Montreal ground the design in modernist clarity and Canadian heritage. A palette of black, white, and golden yellow ties it all together—bold, welcoming, and unapologetically proud.
WNBA Line ‘Em Up
WNBA 3-Point Line Project brought the their signature mark to street basketball courts across the U.S., reimagining these traditionally male spaces as inclusive environments for women and girls. The campaign launched with a citywide activation in New York, including a Brooklyn event hosted by the WNBA, and a documentary featuring players reflecting on their own experiences. The visual identity extended the WNBA logo with a bold court line running through it, symbolizing both the addition of the 3-point line and the ongoing expansion of space for women in the game.
JOAN Creative
JOAN Creative is a rebrand that celebrates the agency’s rare position as a women-founded creative firm thriving across advertising, design, production, and media. The identity reflects both strength and sensitivity—a tribute to the resilience and spirit required to lead in a male-dominated industry. Inspired by a lineage of iconic Joans (Didion, Miró, Armatrading, Rivers, Jett, Joan of Arc), the brand aims to capture their shared talent, conviction, and defiance.
Be On The Right Side of History
Be on the Right Side of History is a digital platform and activist project created during the height of the MeToo movement, when feminist protest culture surged across America. The site functioned as both an accessible archive of American feminists and a hub where users could download protest posters featuring urgent, rallying messages. The project quickly gained traction and its impact extended globally when the United Nations Women’s Convention adopted it as the official identity for their annual conference the following year.
Fermé
Fermé (“Closed” in French) was a Montréal-based loungewear brand born during the COVID-19 pandemic. Inspired by the “Closed” signs seen across shuttered storefronts, the project evolved from a charitable initiative into a viral pop-up brand. Across four capsule collections, it offered elevated everyday essentials—intimates, fleece, socks, and graphic pieces reflecting the mood of the moment—supported by a custom wordmark, cohesive brand system, bespoke packaging, and campaign photography.

Barragan Archives
Barragán is a book design project dedicated to the architectural legacy of Luis Barragán, the master of emotional space. Drawing from his archives, the book examines how Barragán uses light and shadow not merely as visual elements but as sacred, spatial forces. Each page reflects the quiet spirituality embedded in his compositions.

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Select Talks


The Magic of Klein BlueTraces how French artist Yves Klein transformed the rarest color in nature into a symbol of the infinite. In the 1950s, he created International Klein Blue—a pigment so vivid it seemed to swallow light. His monochrome works and performances turned color into experience, making blue not just a hue, but a portal to the unknown.
Why Does Brutalism Matter?Unpacks the meaning behind the architectural movement behind the 2024 film. Emerging after World War II, Brutalism rejected ornament and luxury in favor of raw concrete and honesty; a response to the devastation and disillusionment of the era. It symbolized both grief and hope: the will to rebuild with strength, equality, and truth. Once seen as cold or austere, Brutalism remains a reminder that beauty can exist in honesty, and that rebuilding is itself an act of faith.
Friday and Diego in AmericaRecounts the artists’ disillusionment during their 1930s stay in New York. Confronted by poverty amid excess, Diego Rivera captured the city’s inequality in Frozen Assets, while Frida Kahlo’s Self-Portrait on the Borderline contrasted Mexico’s vitality with America’s industrial coldness. Together, their works serve as a timeless warning against greed and a call to reconnect with humanity and the earth.


The Story of The BauhausExplores how the Bauhaus redefined design by rejecting ornate traditions and championing accessible, functional, and democratic objects for everyday life. It traces the school’s radical ideals, its eventual clash with the Nazi regime, and its forced closure. The story concludes with how its founders dispersed across the world, spreading Bauhaus principles globally and shaping the future of design and architecture.

Modern Art & The CIAUncovers one of art history’s strangest intersections: how the CIA covertly funded Abstract Expressionism during the Cold War. By supporting artists like Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko, the U.S. used avant-garde art as a cultural weapon to promote the idea of American freedom. The talk unpacks the geopolitical strategy behind it and questions what it means when art becomes propaganda.

Swiss Design 101Breaks down the origins of Swiss Design, the iconic visual language built on grids, clarity, and Helvetica. It explores why this minimalist approach emerged, how it spread globally, and why it still dominates branding today. The session ends with a practical look at the core rules of Swiss typography.
The Dark History of PinkFar from being inherently feminine, pink only became associated with girls due to early 20th-century marketing strategies. This talk traces the color’s journey from aristocratic masculinity to innocence, rebellion, sexuality, and empowerment—all while revealing its cultural contradictions. By examining pink as a mirror of society’s shifting attitudes toward women, the talk reframes the color as a battleground of identity and power.

The Roots of Tabi ShoesTraces the split-toe tabi shoe back to its origins in Japanese culture, long before Maison Margiela turned it into a fashion statement. It reveals how traditional footwear informed Margiela’s avant-garde interpretation and why the design remains so provocative today. 

Military Foundations of The Trench Coat
Uncovers the trench coat’s origins on the battlefield, where every strap, flap, and storm shield served a tactical purpose. It explores how Thomas Burberry’s innovations equipped soldiers during World War I and how the garment later migrated from military necessity to cultural staple. The result is a deeper understanding of why this seemingly simple coat carries layers of hidden history.

Why Are Galleries White?Examines the evolution of the white-walled gallery and how it became the dominant aesthetic for displaying art. It reveals that galleries were not always blank, neutral spaces and questions whether “purity” in design is truly neutral or a form of cultural erasure. 
© Anjela Freyja 2025mail@anjelafreyja.com    Instagram, Tiktok, Substack, LinkedIn