[MND] is a brand design firm with deep experience in creating exceptional materials for financial and professional services, technology, education, and non-profit organizations. 

A brand isn’t just your logo. It’s the confluence of strategy, messaging, data, tools, templates, and visuals—seamlessly executed across different media. When built well, your brand can inform and strengthen your dialogue with prospects, clients, and your own employees. 

We employ a unique, common-sense approach that we call Brick-by-Brick Branding which combines exceptional design with smart, user-ready tools and templates that, employed together, are the building blocks of a strong brand. Our approach is equal parts strategy, inspiration, great design, and templates—from your PowerPoint, to your website, to your latest employee’s business card, and everything in between. 

Whether we’re starting from scratch or working within an existing brand, [MND] knows how and where to apply pressure to get your materials and your brand where they need to go.

Michelle D. Novak is founder of [MND], a brand designer and strategist, writer, editor, teacher, and lecturer.

Novak is a Master of Information student (part-time) at Rutgers University, holds a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), and professional certificates from Boston University School for Continuing Education, The ZAG Branding Master Class, Gen-Fed Institute for Fderal Records, and the Genealogical Institute of Pittsburgh, among others.

She has developed brands and big projects for start-up companies to President Clinton’s global philanthropy foundation, the Clinton Global Initiative. Her brand work has been, and continues to be her lifelong passion—and her work is used by clients up from Washington, DC, to Boston, Mass. Her Masters of Information studies brings new challenges in database strategies and organizational systems in the Museums and Archives sectors.

Novak is an active volunteer for numerous historical and genealogical societies and is Trustee and Webmaster for the Genealogical Society of Bergen County (GSBC) and a former Trustee of the Genealogical Society of New Jersey (GSNJ). She is Editor of the GSBC’s national award-winning newsletter, “The Archivist”; serves as social media Chair, and is involved with numerous transcription, indexing, publicity, and digitization projects. During her tenure with GSNJ, she created a comprehensive index for the Society’s 70+ year old Bible Records Collection from numerous indexes supplied in various paper and digital forms. The resulting index consolidates the disparate sources and contains more than 35,000 entries for 6,500 records. She also revamped the Society’s website, finding aids, social media, membership materials, exhibit materials, and newsletter.

Novak serves as Project Administrator for the New Jersey Early Land Records Project, a joint project between the Genealogical Society of New Jersey and the GSNJ-New Jersey State Archives. The project is currently indexing and digitizing (partial) more than 80,000 pre-1800 land records—which were in private hands from 1664 until only a few years ago.

She is also a teacher, and her professional talks about Microsoft Word and PowerPoint have been conducted at SEI, AIG, the Association of Professional Genealogists, among others. She has lectured on technology, digitization, and genealogical topics at local, regional, and national conferences including the National Genealogical Society Family History Conference, Association of Professional Genealogists Professional Management Conference, New England Regional Genealogical Conference, and is developing a digitization workshop for fall 2019.

See more details on various projects at LinkedIn >