How Sasha Denisova built a practice where brand and type intersect

For Sasha Denisova, every word a brand speaks passes through type – making typography its most fundamental building block. The award-winning designer and art director, now Senior Brand Designer at Red Antler, works deliberately at the intersection of brand and type design. Her path into type came through branding, where existing typefaces consistently fell short of carrying a brand’s emotional tone. Through client projects like Solzão – a Brazilian wellness brand that sold over 3 million units in its first year – and self-initiated work like Nice Try, she’s developed a philosophy that treats custom type as infrastructure rather than decoration. In this conversation, Denisova discusses why self-initiated projects remain essential for experimentation, and how to reframe type for clients who believe enough fonts already exist. TBI: Hi Sasha, it’s great to speak to you again! How are you? SD: I’m great, thank you! January has felt like a reset in the best possible way – a bit of a ‘new me’ moment. I’ve just started my role as a Senior Brand Designer at Red Antler, so I’m fully diving into new projects and soaking up that unmistakable New York energy. There’s a real hustle here, but in a way that feels motivating rather than exhausting – it constantly pushes you to think bigger, sharper, and more ambitiously. I’m honestly chomping at the bit.