[ About / Studio of one ]
A studio of one,
on a slow clock.
Portrait, Lisbon studio, March 2026
[ 01 / Bio ]
Mara Vance is an independent designer working at the intersection of editorial, identity, and product. For the last twelve years she has worked with publishers, museums, banks, and research labs that share a preference for clarity over cleverness.
Before going independent in 2021, she led design at a small editorial studio in Brooklyn and spent four years inside a banking platform team where she learned to design things that ten people had to use every day, not for an hour at a conference.
She works alone, with a rotating cast of two or three trusted collaborators when the work calls for it. She does not take on more than four projects a year.
[ 02 / Experience ]
Where the time went.
- 2021 — Now
Independent Designer
Self-employed
Brand, editorial and product work for studios, founders and institutions.
- 2017 — 2021
Senior Product Designer
Meridian Bank, NY
Led the design of internal lending tools used by 40+ officers across three offices.
- 2014 — 2017
Designer
Field Studio, Brooklyn
Editorial and identity work for cultural clients including museums, presses and theatres.
- 2012 — 2014
Junior Designer
Two Twelve, NY
Wayfinding and information design for transit and civic clients.
[ 03 / Things I do ]
Brand systems · Editorial design · Product design · Design systems · Wayfinding · Front-end (HTML, CSS) · Type direction · Research and interviews
[ 04 / Said about ]
“Mara is the rare designer who can hold a brand identity and a database schema in the same head, on the same Tuesday. We trusted her with the entire platform and she gave us back something quieter and twice as useful.”
“She read every essay in our back catalogue before she touched a pixel. That tells you everything. The site she designed reads like the books we publish.”
“Our museum doesn't have a marketing budget. Mara gave us a brand we can repaint ourselves, twice a year, with a stencil and a tin of red paint. That's design.”
[ 05 / What’s next ]