Communications + Design That Connects

MND helps cultural, educational, nonprofit, and mission-driven organizations develop effective communications, communicate complex ideas, strengthen their brands, and connect with the audiences they need to reach.

MND for Cultural Heritage Institutions

Communicating History. Connecting Audiences.

MND combines marketing and communications expertise with deep knowledge of history, archives, and cultural heritage. This combination helps museums, libraries, archives, historical organizations, and other mission-driven institutions turn complex information into compelling stories and connect their programs, collections, and ideas with new audiences.

Museums, libraries, and archives are no strangers to external forces affecting access, context, and understanding. They are having to do more with less while the ever-changing media landscape demands content delivered in more and more formats. From online digital collections to interpretive history, there are so many new ways to connect.

But the opportunities are also unprecedented. What’s needed are fresh insight and approaches to engaging people with history—using communication tools to tell your story as it should be told.

MND works across the full communications process, from strategy and messaging through writing, design, digital production, and delivery. For smaller nonprofits and mission-driven organizations in particular, that flexibility matters.

Organizations often need their communications professionals to wear many hats, and MND is built for exactly that.

MND Branding + Design Services

Bringing Brands to Life = Strategy + Branding + Design

A strong brand is more than a logo. It is the intersection of strategy, messaging, audience needs, tools, templates, and visuals. MND’s approach brings those elements together to create practical, consistent communications and tools that organizations can use every day.

From strategy and messaging to digital campaigns and event promotion, MND helps organizations communicate consistently and effectively across the channels where their audiences engage. Services include:

Marketing Strategy
Audience-focused messaging, campaign planning, communications strategy, and promotional planning.

Content + Editorial
Writing, editing, storytelling, educational content, publications, newsletters, websites, and social media.

Digital Communications
Website content, email communications, social media, digital campaigns, and audience engagement.

Event + Program Promotion
Communications and promotional materials designed to build awareness and participation in programs, exhibitions, lectures, conferences, and educational events.

Brand + Visual Communications
Brand strategy, visual identity, presentation systems, print materials, and digital design.

MND is used to working under pressure and getting things done. With strategy, writing, design, digital, and production expertise under one roof, projects can move from idea to finished product without unnecessary handoffs or delays.

About MND

Marketing + Communications | Design | History + Cultural Heritage

Michelle D. Novak, MI, is a marketing and communications professional, designer, writer, historian, and archivist with more than 25 years of experience helping organizations communicate complex ideas and connect with their audiences.

Her professional career began in New York’s design and branding world, including work with Vignelli Associates, Arnold Saks & Associates, Donovan & Green/Marchfirst, Sotheby’s, and other leading organizations. Today, through M Novak Design, Inc. (MND), she works with nonprofit, educational, cultural heritage, philanthropic, technology, finserv, and professional organizations.

She brings an unusual combination of communications and subject-matter expertise. In addition to her marketing and design career, Michelle holds a Master of Information (formerly, MLIS degree) in Archives and Preservation from Rutgers University (summa cum laude) and has extensive experience working with historical collections, primary sources, educational programming, and public history.

The result is a communications professional who understands both the message as well as the material behind it.

Selected Results

10,000+ attendees
History Camp attendees engaged through more than a decade of educational “unconference” programming.

13,000+ attendees
Unique viewers reached through America’s Summer Road Trip, a lockdown project of The Pursuit of History, that virtually visited 12 historic sites that drew more than 13,000 visitors to our livestream.

400 videos
Recordings in the History Camp archive, an ever-growing repository of recorded History Camp presentations, History Camp Discussions, and historic site visits.

300%+ increase
Increase in visitors to a small historic site through unpaid social media promotion and local outreach. The largest event saw more than 200 visitors attend, where previous years’ attendance was less than 50. Sustained visitor numbers were increased by more than 300% over subsequent events.