State Courthouses Photo Book, Second Edition
In our early years working with the National Center for State Courts (NCSC) and Conference of Chief Justices (CCJ), we designed the first edition of the State Courthouses photo book. It’s a niche publication highlighting how the United States’ “commonwealths, states, and territories express the rule of law through architecture,” according to the 2013 preface. Get your reading glasses on because that adds up to 56 chapters of state courthouse architectural photography and history. If that’s your jam, you can still buy a copy!
To celebrate CCJ’s 75th anniversary, NCSC decided to produce a second edition and tagged us in to update the content and cover. You know us—we nerd out on this kind of thing. NCSC agreed with us that if the content was getting a refresh, the typography styles needed one, too.
Type trends can shift dramatically over a decade’s time. Yet, we wanted this edition to remain timeless. We moved from Helvetica Neue for headings to Archivo Semibold and from Georgia for paragraphs to Stix Two. It’s a similar strategy—sans-serif headings and serif paragraphs—but the nuanced changes make the reading experience smoother. As part of this type shift, we also reduced the height of the chapter opening drop caps for more subdued emphasis.
We also updated caption styles to use arrow icons rather than the chevrons of the past. This adjustment clarifies which way the caption is directed.
With content styles and updates in place, the dust jacket was next. Working with the client, we selected the Puerto Rico Supreme Court hearing room in San Juan for the front cover. It’s a beautiful space, and the unusual circular shape brings visual interest. The back cover features the rotunda floor of Alabama’s Heflin-Torbert Judicial Building in Montgomery. The circular shape of the flooring is a nice pairing with the front cover subject with the tiles adding texture behind the cover text.
Finally, we created a bookmark to promote the second edition release. The text on the bookmark is brief. The focal point, which is doing the most to build excitement for the release, is the teaser of amazing courthouse photography.
