Restore Justice

In a world of extreme incarceration sentencing, Restore Justice advocates for fairness, humanity, and compassion throughout the Illinois criminal legal system, with a primary focus on those affected by extreme sentences as youth. Restore Justice promotes healing and hope through their tenacious policy work and transitional release support. Since the original website launch in 2016, the organization has grown and expanded its focus. Two sister organizations, Restore Justice and Restore Justice Illinois, now have distinct purposes and audiences. Due to the public confusion between the two organizations, there was a need to create a unified feeling while signalling clear distinction between the two websites.

Briteweb partnered with Restore Justice to build a bold, compelling, easy-to-use (and easy-to-maintain) website. But most importantly, this project captured the incredible work and impact Restore Justice is making in the world.

It was clear to us that their human-centered approach was not represented on the website. This initiated our focus on content and visual strategy to transform their legal-forward language into human-forward storytelling—depicting their true identity.

With brand recognition throughout Illinois’ criminal justice sector, Briteweb chose to build on Restore Justice’s existing brand guidelines to communicate their impact in an improved and elevated way. Inspired by their strong and empathetic leadership, we evolved their color palette to be brighter and used a bold typeface to convey their impact. We created space for photography that showcases the essence of the work and people, and a sense of devotion, action, compassion and togetherness. 

In addition to the brand work, we needed to ensure the Restore Justice team could easily create new content, without the frustrating backend systems. We knew that providing page templates and content-building systems would support their ongoing need to share Legislative Bills, online resources, education, stories, and much more, with their community and beyond.

Upon meeting the Restore Justice team, we instantly felt touched and inspired by the multitude of stories and first-hand experience shared about the harsh realities of the criminal justice system. What stood out profoundly was their perseverant belief that somehow, every small step could eventually lead to massive change. Our priority was to create a website user experience that reflects the powerful work, critical change, and commitment to people. Through emotive storytelling and evocative imagery, we brought their community to the center of their brand.

By giving each of the two sister organizations varying color motifs, we make sure users can tell whether they are on the website of Restore Justice’ foundation or its political action group. Now the initiatives of both Restore Justice and Restore Justice Illinois can seamlessly work together as a collaborative online system. 

This partnership resulted in an easy-to-navigate and easy-to-update website that embodies Restore Justice’s strength, progress, and heart. It’s a website that truly represents their powerful work. And a home for their community that they feel proud of.