2025 was a particularly partisan year for the US Supreme Court, with extensive media and public outcry about almost every decision. As event program design goes, it was a tough ask to ensure that the program clearly spelled out “Non-Partisan-Discussion” to the audience.

The cover image needed to do the heavy lifting and set the right tone immediately. I purchased and photographed an ornate judges’ gavel, digitally refining the image until it became an “icon” of a gavel, while retaining and enhancing shadow detail to lend it the gravitas I felt it needed (it is the Supreme Court, after all). A few iterations of the event program cover design made it clear that the best way to illustrate the messaging around a non-partisan, academic discussion about the court’s decisions would be to place the gavel over a sterile, white background, as if it were a scientist’s sample prepared for examination under a high-powered microscope–bright light, no distractions, just the Ding an sich, an empirical foreshadowing of the tone of the discussion we were hoping to host.

See how the finished program looked with the cover in place.