Indhira Rojas was a design consultant in San Francisco — running a studio, teaching interaction design at CCA, starting a co-working space in her hometown of Santo Domingo — when she woke at three in the morning with her heart pounding and a question she could not answer: what am I doing? The burnout was real, but beneath it lay something deeper. Rojas is a survivor of childhood trauma, and for years she had wondered where the millions of other people with similar experiences were hiding. The answer, she realised, was that they were pretending to be okay. Just like her.
In September 2016, she launched a Kickstarter campaign for Anxy — a biannual, beautifully designed magazine about mental health explored through a creative lens. Over 800 backers pledged more than $50,000 in thirty days. The first issue, themed around Anger, shipped in May 2017 and featured an interview with Margaret Atwood, reporting from the turmoil of Turkey to the front lines of customer service, and photo essays by Matt Eich, Melissa Spitz, and Brian Frank. The second issue tackled Workaholism. Subsequent issues explored The Masculinity Issue and Boundaries. Each used its central theme to build a world of personal essays, reported features, visual stories, and interviews — not as self-help, but as what Rojas called a therapy group in print.
The magazine won two Stack Awards — Launch of the Year and Subscribers’ Choice — and was highlighted by the New York Times in a piece about America’s anxiety epidemic. It sold over 5,000 copies and gained nearly 400 subscribers, with stockists around the world. The editorial team included Jennifer Maerz (formerly of The Bold Italic), Katie MacBride (Rolling Stone, New York Magazine), and Kati Krause (Berlin correspondent for Monocle). The design, overseen by Rojas through her studio Anagraph, was exceptional — Anxy looked like a design magazine that happened to be about feelings, which was precisely the argument: that conversations about mental health deserve the same aesthetic care as art, fashion, or architecture.
Anxy is no longer publishing new issues, but its four editions remain essential objects — proof that there was always an audience for a publication brave enough to sit with discomfort rather than rushing past it, and beautiful enough to make that discomfort feel like an invitation rather than a burden.
<a href="https://anxymag.com/" target="\_blank">Visit Anxy