&Type!_/_ Type Voice_/_ Initial Letters _/_Festival: Gallo Fonts _/_ Letterheads _/_ Goudy Birtham _/_ Village Initial Letters by Ilene Strizver Have a lot of text to set and want to spice it up? Try using an initial letter. An initial letter (or cap as they are often referred to) is an enlarged first character of a paragraph which can sit above, below, to the left of or even behind your text and can be set in a different weight, style or color. Initial treatments include drop caps, raised caps as well as boxed, reverse and overlapped initials. The use of contrasting typefaces including decorative, calligraphic or ornate type styles can be very effective. You can even use a lowercase character! (Consider it "typographic license.") The key to using initial letters professionally is proper alignment. If the character is intended to appear flush left with the text, it should align optically rather than mechanically. Certain characters such as those with rounds (C, O, S, etc.), diagonals (A, V, W, Y) as well as characters with serifs (which get proportionally larger with size), should be pulled out to the left a bit to visually align. If the character is the first letter of a word (as opposed to a single letter word such as "A" or "I"), try to space the rest of the word close enough to the initial to read as a word. Your type can look amateurish and be hard to read when the rest of the word seems to be floating away. A couple of things to remember: never repeat the enlarged initial in the text, and don’t use too many initial caps in one job. In fact, one per length of copy or long section is probably enough. Whatever kind of initial cap you use, readability should never be sacrificed for style. Keeping that in mind, your imagination is the limit to what you can do. Ilene Strizver is a typographic consultant, designer and writer specializing in all aspects of typographic communication. Her primary client is ITC, where she directs the typeface development program.. Continue with "Illuminated Initial Caps" by Fred Showker Back to &Type! [ The Design Center ] _ [ DTG Newsletter ] _ [ Designers' Bookshelf ] Want to discuss it? Subscribe to The Designers' CAFE You are visiting: http://www.graphic-design.com/Type/ Copyright 1996 - 2000, Showker Graphic Arts, for the The Design & Publishing Center, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Notes: The screen shots herein represent the copyrighted works of their respective owners, and are used here for editorial demonstration purposes. please read and be aware of our Legal Properties & Disclaimers document. Not all areas of the online environment allow special characters such as the registration and trademark marks. This file will alert you to proprietary works that cannot be duplicated or distributed. Copyright 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2001 by Showker Graphic Arts, The Design & Publishing Center, on behalf of the respective authors and artists. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. &photographic, Photoshop Tips & Tricks, &Type, WebDesign & Review, and Pixelsmith are all trademarks for The Design & Publishing Center. Other products mentioned in these pages are the registered trademarks of their respective owners.