A Case for Case I: Initial Caps or All Caps?
July 21, 2009 by Jerry
nitial caps or all caps, which should you use?
An article in the New York Times reported on a trend among major corporations to update their brand logos, and that several of the companies have done so with “striking similarities” in their redesign. Below you’ll find the past and present versions of the Wal-Mart, Kraft, Stop & Shop, and Sysco logos.
Please note that all of them have converted from all caps to initial caps. The Times article described this shift as “Toned-down type. Bold, block capital letters are out. Their replacements are mostly or entirely lower case, softening the stern voice of corporate authority to something more like an informal chat.” The article then went on to propose two reasons for the shift. First, the influence of email and text messaging which, like e.e. cummings’ poetry, is often composed in all lower case. Second, the long economic crisis which has prompted a new look that is “non-threatening, reassuring, playful, even child-like. Not emblems of distant behemoths, but faces of friends.”
Should you make a similar shift in the text in your presentation graphics design? Perhaps, but first consider the different circumstances of each medium. A corporate logo is an inanimate object, regardless of whatever font, colors, or decorative ornaments are used. It sits inert on product package, or in a print, electronic, or video advertisement from where it must convey a complete, immediate, and consistent message. Conversely, a presentation is a dynamic event in which all graphics, including text, serve only to support the presenter. In this paradigm, the graphics play a secondary role, as a headline, leaving the details to the presenter to provide in his or her narrative.
The best role model for this role relationship is in television news broadcasts where the graphics that accompany any item are composed of a simple impressionistic image and a few words of text. The words in the text are, more often than not, composed of all caps, as a headline; leaving the newscaster to provide the details of the story. In print—newspapers and magazines—headlines are often in all caps, and the body text is in initial caps.
Headlines are intended to capture attention, and all caps demand attention. Witness two of the most ubiquitous and important attention-demanding signs in the world:
Therefore, you can use all caps in the text in your presentations, but that will require that you keep that text to four or five words at a maximum. All caps are more difficult to read than initial caps. Initial caps, as in the illuminated first letter of ancient manuscripts, signal the beginning of a long read. As you read in yesterday’s post, your slides are not meant to be read by you or by your audience.
So now you can see that this entire post has been a trick question. The method in the madness is to get you to design your slides with the Less Is More principle whether you use initial caps or all caps. Make it easy for your audience—or they will make it hard for you.
Tomorrow’s post extends this advice to a consideration of serif or sans serif font.
A Joint Program of Power Presentations, Ltd. &
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Don’t ever expect your powerpoint to be read if it’s all caps, all bold, or all italics.
There is a full book that reflects this: Type and Layout by Colin Wheildon. It basically ran through different types of fonts and font styles.
Thanks for your feedback and the book reference. My preference is for intial caps, too, but my main message here is Less Is More. Just imagine if you were to make a presentation about texting while driving, and used as your only graphic a STOP sign. It would be in all caps, but your point would be loud and clear.