Detroit’s court system, like many across the country, operates largely out of public view. Without visibility, inequities persist unchecked and communities are left without meaningful ways to hold institutions accountable. Court Watch Detroit was founded as a grassroots effort to change that, mobilizing residents to observe court proceedings and bring transparency into local courtrooms. The challenge was building an identity, a platform, and a system that could make court watching accessible, credible, and sustainable for the community.
Client/Partner
Court Watch Detroit
Timeline
12 Months
Focus Area
Civic Transparency & Accountability
Deliverables
Brand Identity, Website, & Messaging
Court Watch Detroit’s identity draws on both the broader movement for transparency and the local culture of Detroit. My research began with a review of activist organizations’ color palettes, which often rely on stark combinations of red, black, white, and (sometimes) blue, green, and yellow. To set this project apart, I built a more expansive palette rooted in the vibrancy of Detroit itself: deep red for gravity, muted blues and greens for balance and trust, and golds, pinks, and purples for clarity and optimism. Together, the palette reflects the city’s diversity while avoiding the repetition of standard activist aesthetics.
Looking at other court-watching programs nationwide, I was inspired by how many leaned on eye motifs and bold wordmarks to communicate visibility. For Detroit, I built on that inspiration by designing a geometric wordmark that feels civic and strong while embedding a subtle eye symbol into the word “Detroit.” This integration directly ties the identity to observation and accountability, grounding the mission in place.
The typeface reinforces this connection to Detroit. Its bold, condensed geometry nods to the city’s visual culture, from graffiti and mural work to the signage of blues clubs and neighborhood businesses. It’s designed to feel both authoritative and grassroots, professional enough to anchor a civic movement but raw enough to honor the community it serves. The resulting identity is distinct, accessible, and deeply local—a system that speaks with the urgency of a movement while carrying the cultural texture of Detroit itself.
Once the identity was in place, the next step was building a digital ecosystem that could support the actual practice of court watching. Volunteers aren’t just present in courtrooms, their observations need to be recorded, reported, and fed back into a system that makes patterns visible. The challenge was creating tools that made this process accessible for community members while also generating consistent, usable data for organizers.
The research began with potential volunteers: through informal interviews and feedback sessions, I learned that many people felt unsure of what court watching required, intimidated by legal language, or unclear about how their role fit into the bigger picture. To broaden perspective, I also conducted a comparative analysis of peer organizations’ websites and reporting systems. This highlighted a gap: while many programs had strong missions, their digital tools often lacked usability and consistency, leaving volunteers without clear pathways.
The website became the entry point. Its information architecture was designed around three concrete actions: “Observe. Record. Report.” These emerged directly from volunteer feedback as the clearest way to explain the process. Every design choice was made with usability in mind: mobile-first layouts for volunteers reporting directly after hearings and plain-language explanations to reduce cognitive load.
With the website in place as the entry point, the next step was ensuring volunteers had the training and tools to carry their role through in practice. To prepare volunteers before entering courtrooms, I developed the “Watchers Workshop”, a structured training platform built from scratch. It combined asynchronous modules with resource libraries and guided walkthroughs of courtroom practices. To ensure consistency, I designed slide decks for live video calls and in-person sessions, so the same material could scale across different training formats.
For reporting, I created a secure volunteer portal that streamlined the submission of courtroom observations. User testing emphasized the need for efficiency—volunteers didn’t want long, complicated forms. The portal therefore uses embedded instructions, simplified workflows, and mobile accessibility to minimize friction. For organizers, it provided standardized data collection that could be analyzed at scale.
Finally, I built out the training systems that tied everything together: facilitator guides, reference sheets, and branded materials that reinforced the identity across all touchpoints. These assets ensured that whether someone was learning online, in a workshop, or inside a courtroom, they encountered the same design language and process.
The result was a full digital infrastructure. Not just a website, but an ecosystem that recruits, trains, and equips volunteers while giving organizers reliable tools to track and scale court watching across Detroit. By lowering barriers to entry and standardizing reporting, the system turned court watching from an abstract idea into a sustainable civic practice.
