Two people side by side holding iPhones in Finnaij cases: a Nordic floral design by Salla Niemi and Danfo After Dark by Ada Okoye

Our story

Art you carry everywhere.

A brother-and-sister brand putting independent artists’ work, inspired by the Nordics and Africa, on the phone in your hand.

What’s in a name

Finn for Finland. Naij for Naija, Nigeria. Our name comes straight from our own heritage, the two cultures we grew up between. Look closely and you’ll find both flags tucked beneath the two Ns: Finland, where Tinu was born and we spent our summers growing up, and Nigeria, where Richard fell in love with the culture and Tinu called Lagos home.

Nordic calm. African soul.

That’s the spirit behind every design we choose: the quiet simplicity of the North, and the colour, warmth and rhythm of Africa.

Map of the places Richard and Tinu have called home: London, Helsinki, Lagos, Richmond, San Diego and Daegu.

The founders

Meet Richard & Tinu

We’re a brother and sister with Nigerian and Finnish parents, and a fairly scattered map of homes between us.

Richard was born in London, spent a few years in Nigeria, where he fell in love with its culture, and most of his childhood summers in Finland. By day he consults on ERP programmes, specialising in finance for retail businesses.

Tinu was born in Finland and has since called Helsinki, London, Lagos, Richmond, California and Daegu home. She’s a mum first, a realtor second, with a background in journalism.

Finnaij is the thing we build together.

A framed hand-painted ceramic tile by our mum’s aunt: two figures walking across a frozen Finnish lake in winter, signed EK

How it started

It began with a hand-painted tile

In 2022, Richard flew out to visit Tinu in California. Somewhere between catching up and reminiscing about Finland, we got talking about our mum’s aunt.

Every time we saw her, without exception, she’d hand us something she had painted herself. Ceramic tiles she’d framed, the odd mug. Painting was simply what she loved doing. She never sold a thing, and never expected anyone outside the family to see it. This is one of them: a winter afternoon on the ice, signed with her initials.

That stuck with us. How many people like her are out there, making beautiful things purely for the love of it? We wanted to give that kind of art somewhere to go. In 2024, Finnaij was born.

Why phone cases

The canvas you never put down

We brainstormed plenty of ideas, but kept coming back to the phone. It goes everywhere with you, it’s in your hand a hundred times a day, and it needs protecting anyway. So why not make the thing that protects it worth looking at?

The artists

Art you won’t find anywhere else

Every design on Finnaij comes from an independent illustrator and is made exclusively for us. We look for work with Nordic calm or African soul, by people who create because they love to. One day, we’ll add a few of our own.

Meet all our artists

Aino Kallio

Elsi Vaarala

Ada Okoye

VIRTA

Salla Niemi

Tobi Akinyemi

Frida Lövström

Made to order

Printed when you order it, not before

Every case is made only once you’ve chosen it. No warehouse of unsold stock, no designs heading to landfill when the season changes. It also means we can offer far more art than we could ever keep on a shelf.

You pick a design

Choose the art and your phone model.

We print it for you

Your case is printed specially for your order.

It ships to your door

Across the UK, US, Europe and Australia.

WHEN IT ARRIVES

Better in your hand than on your screen

We want opening your parcel to be a small “wow”: a case that feels properly well made, a phone that clicks right in, and art you’ll catch yourself just looking at. A few of you have told us the cases look and feel even better in person than in our photos. We’ll take that.