Punk meets prestige: Mavens evolves with MEK rebrand

7 min read

Introducing a special collaboration led by Womentor and MEK STUDIO® Founder and Executive Creative Director Mirella Arapian with Mavens Founder and Editor Leah Morris. Take a look behind the curtain at the stories, impact and creative process behind this meaningful rebrand.

By Leah Morris

Edited by Leila Khoshoie

It’s a Wednesday night and I’m sitting with MEK Founder and ECD Mirella Arapian at one of the northside’s best vegan restaurants. Like many Melbournians, she’s dressed all in black—her dark hair neatly pulled back and a serious look on her face. ‘So I think MEK should do Mavens’ brand identity’, she states. I take a sip of my chardonnay and smile from the inside out.

This directness is one of my favourite things about Mirella, who was introduced to me as a ‘must interview’ name for Mavens by at least five people. ‘Direct’ is a tone that I identify with, having been called blunt, abrupt and abrasive as both a compliment and criticism many times (I maintain that it’s a form of effective communication, perhaps amplified by the fact I rarely apologise unless I’m genuinely at fault, and that I’m a woman). It strikes me that Mirella and I have both learned to take our seat at the table without being asked, and that makes us quite a force.

That’s not to say she isn’t a force on her own, because she is. Mirella has over two decades of design experience, and a curious mind that even saw her work in criminology for a time. In 2017 she founded Womentor, an international mentoring program for women in the design industry. After four years running it and seven running her first design studio Vertigo, she rebranded Vertigo to MEK in 2020 – the creative impact studio transforming brands into catalysts for change.

Today, she also sits on the board of Design Declares Australia helping to declare a climate and ecological emergency, and lending her support as an Assisterhood mentor. In fact, few have given quite so much to making the creative industry a better place as Mirella, and even fewer have her courage to speak the hard truths. In an industry built on spin (not sorry because it’s true), I find her leadership particularly inspiring.

And so of course I respond with ‘I would love that, how do we get started?’

The vision

I write the brief, defining our core need as a rebrand to elevate Mavens’ brand identity and take it into a new era of sophistication. Given the high expectations of our industry audience, I knew aesthetics mattered but it was so much more than that. We needed MEK’s help to go beyond traditional brand building and leverage the power of good design to effect lasting change.

We kick off with a strategy session at MEK’s workspace in T.O.M.S Place; 1 Tripovich Street, Brunswick. It’s a beautiful Spanish Mission–style heritage building, a former produce market nestled between tall Victorian buildings off Sydney Road. There’s good coffee around every graffitied corner. Mirella gives me a belated Christmas present—macadamia handcream and peppermint lip balm. I give her some extra copies of Mavens Volume 2 to share with her clients (it’s got MEK’s manifesto as a double-page spread). T.O.M.S’ office dog Maggie is assigned the essential role of Chief Creative Distractor.

We begin by reflecting on the etymology of the word MAVEN. It's a Yiddish word, the language spoken by my mother's parents. It translates to 'person with understanding' or 'teacher', but in modern English it has come to mean an expert or someone highly skilled at their job.

So in a way, I tell Mirella, this etymology is in memory of my Polish–Jewish grandparents who escaped Warsaw during WWII and later brought so much joy to my childhood. She tells me that MEK is a nod to her Armenian heritage—mek is Armenian for ‘one’ (One people. One planet.) This is how the vision begins—I can see that Mirella appreciates the importance of storytelling and our need to honour and validate Mavens’ contributors.

‘A strong, bold, confident identity helps creates a safe space for candour and vulnerability, which is imperative to growth and building a community,’ she says, emphasising that underrepresented people looking for guidance, role models, mentors or a community are often at a point in their career or life where they feel disenfranchised, overwhelmed or lacking support.

‘A strong, bold, confident identity helps creates a safe space for candour and vulnerability, which is imperative to growth and building a community.’

She tells me that the strategy workshop is a key part of the brand building process, but one that sometimes gets overlooked by clients wanting to get to the shiny-new-visuals part.

‘Strategy is the foundation of everything, like roots in a thriving ecosystem. It gives purpose to design, ensuring every creative decision serves a bigger vision and aligns with a brand’s mission”, she says. “It creates powerful brand DNA with the rigour and clarity needed to ensure brand effectiveness and impact. Without strategy, identity is just aesthetics and lacks the depth needed to effect real change.’

On the topic of change, perhaps the most valuable output from this workshop is defining our ‘why’. You’d think as a writer this would come easily to me, but it’s been extremely hard. Because there are a million reasons why I believe Mavens is needed. MEK helps me distill them into a single statement: Our mission is to champion timely issues affecting underrepresented people in communications through bold advocacy and unique perspectives that inspire action and spark meaningful change.

I share a positioning statement I wrote that I’ve been considering for some time, ‘until equality is the new norm’. Mirella loves and understands it, and it goes into the proverbial cauldron.

Next, we reconnect with Mavens values (truth, community and kindness). In contrast, this is very easy as I think about them all the time. MEK develops them for inclusion in our new Brand Guidelines. With the important thinking now captured, it’s time to get making.

The craft

We’re witches, so the craft comes naturally to us.

MEK has set up a handy Trello board with the workflow neatly ordered. My homework includes a digital moodboard which I cram with colours, fashion, photography, illustration, existing logos and more for MEK to synthesise and reference in the creative direction. I link Mirella to our Tone of Voice and Written Style Guide, whichI’ve developed over the past three years. It goes in the cauldron too.

When we next meet for MEK to present the rebrand, I’ve taken a full day of annual leave in excited anticipation (I also work full time as an agency copywriter). I trot into T.O.M.S, full of nervous energy amplified by two-coffees-and-it’s-only-ten-oclock. Mirella greets me and we dive straight in.

The brand idea is punk meets prestige. There is a visual language that captures the rebellious spirit of the punk subculture, blending it with the refined elegance and cultural authority of iconic publications like Vanity Fair and The New Yorker. My eyeballs are popping; the juxtaposition seems impossible but it just works.

Mirella tells me:

“This balance between disruption and sophistication creates a unique brand idea. One that honours editorial excellence while challenging conventions, resulting in an identity that’s both authoritative and unapologetically original.”

I feel privileged to be its custodian.

The wordmark itself, with its unconventional character proportions, reflects our uniqueness, punk attitude and love of the radical, while retaining all of the pragmatism from the brief. Like the fact we don’t have any budget for typefaces and require Google fonts to ensure our digital success on a shoestring.

When Mirella tells me the story behind the wordmark, I’m even more thrilled.

“Its typeface, Staatliches, lends from the lettering on the cover of the first Bauhaus exhibition catalogue published in 1923. The Bauhaus was a patriarchal art and design school that merged craftsmanship with modern industry, shaping the foundations of modernist design. It preached progress yet sidelined women, restricting them to weaving and ceramics, while men dominated design, architecture, and innovation.”

‘Reclaiming the Bauhaus’ visual language for Mavens, a movement that champions equality, subverts the Bauhaus’ legacy and turns a symbol of exclusion into a tool for change, rewriting the narrative on who gets to create the future.’

Even the colour palette and typography embody this bold brand idea. Mirella continues: ‘The colour system balances rich, sophisticated colours with unexpected vibrant accents, reflecting the brand's duality of professionalism and raw, uncompromising energy. For typography we drew inspiration from iconic editorial design, adopting fonts that communicate authority while maintaining a fresh edge. The typographic hierarchy creates a visual rhythm reminiscent of classic magazines, yet with unique proportions and layouts.’

My 12-year-old self, reading Vogue on my fold-out bed in the loft room I shared with my three siblings, would be obsessed.

The impact

This collaboration is more than a rebrand. It’s the moment we slither into a fresh new skin: one that moves us beyond a publication to embrace the movement we’ve become. Mavens represents a bold, unapologetic shift toward a future where equality isn’t just a goal but the new norm. By empowering others and challenging the status quo, we're here to shape a new narrative— where opportunity is limitless, voices are heard and change is inevitable. It takes courage, but together I believe we can do it.

Mirella is similarly confident.

‘This rebrand will shift the perception of Mavens from being a source of content to a dynamic, action-driven force that inspires underrepresented people, allies and industry stakeholders to be a part of its movement for change.'

'It will create a deeper connection with people and form stronger communities, amplifying the movement’s relevance and overall impact.’

We hope you agree — join us.