Did I ever mention that I love drop caps? Because I REALLY love drop caps!
Sample sentence taken from @ailendolin's amazing short fic "Hope and Ruin" which I am so very happy to be allowed to bind in my Tolkien Short Fic Anthology project and simply cannot recommend warmly enough! (I mean, seriously! Just look at that start!)
Continuing on from my last post on body fonts, I thought I'd do a little highlight of some great fonts to use for drop caps.
I love drop caps. Drop 'em like it's hot, amiright? Big and dramatic and so very eye catching, a drop cap is a great way to start a new chapter.
See below the break for my full post on drop caps. Links will be provided to where you can get the fonts discussed for free. Beverages and snacks will be bring-your-own only. This is an amateur session. If you're looking for profession opinions and tips, uh, you've come to the wrong place.
So when I'm adding drop caps to any text, I always figure out what body font I'm using first. The body font is like the main course of the meal, and the drop cap is the fine wine I'm trying to pair with it. After all, you wouldn't have a nice chianti with a tuna salad, would you? (I wouldn't actually know. I don't drink wine. But I still wouldn't pair comic sans with anything) It's all down to preference, of course, but some combinations just work more easily than others.
First off, if the body font I'm working with is a bit fancier and more detailed (like IM FELL English), I'll usually just use that same font for the drop caps. Using the same font for the body text and the drop caps can look great and be very aesthetically pleasing, as it gives the overall text a clean, consistent, and balanced appearance. Having the same font for different uses throughout a text while varying the font's size and weight and format is a great way to design something pleasing to the eye and not overwhelm or confuse the reader (and it'll save yourself some time, too. Honestly, picking designs and fonts take up quite a significant portion of my typesetting time).
It's like instead of adding toppings to your ice cream, you just put on another scoop of vanilla. Delicious, and classic. You'll also notice that I use small caps in the first line along with the drop cap. I usually do either the entire first line, or just the first 3-5 initial words marked as small caps. I like small caps with a drop cap. It's like an extra dollop of whip cream on top of your ice cream. Not necessary, but still yummy.
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Of course, choosing a font that's different from your body font to use for your drop caps can be super fun and dramatic. It'll make your text stand out even more, and can add a lot of character to a design. I've seen some really creative uses of drop caps with graphics/ornaments added in, but for this post I'm sticking to just the fonts.
This one here uses Initials TFB. Initials TFB is one of my favorite fonts to use for drop caps. This font has a lot of really nice detail to it. It's gothic. Fancy. Super duper dressed up. And it's square shaped! Which means it's easy to format and place in your text and won't stick out where it's not wanted. It's like a really nice clip on time. Perfect for formal occasions and convenient to use. (And those occasions can range easily from the classic to gothic to romantic to fantastic.)
Next is another square, gothic font! May I present, her majesty, Medieval Victoriana? Now, this one is pretty similar to Initials TFB, but it has a different vibe to it than the previous font. Also super detailed and fancy, the designs for Medieval Victoriana are a bit cleaner and crisper. It's available in two styles, one with the letter in the center white filled, and one with it black filled (as pictured above).
And now we have something different! Not square shaped! ...Though still gothic (I use a LOT of gothic fonts. They just work so well for so many books! Makes me feel like a medieval monk scribing away). This font is Augusta. It's a medium sort of fancy. Not as full on, in your face as the previous two fonts, but still enough to get into the grand ballroom without making a scene. What I like about this font is that it has a lot of character and flare, but is still decently legible and not so overpowering that it takes too much away from the body font. Augusta also has some very nice lower case letters, making it also a great font for headers and titles (which you might want to pair up with your drop caps, to limit the number of fonts used on a single page). Well dressed and versatile, this font could be a British super spy undercover at the bar. If that bar was behind a medieval printing press.
Cloister Black is like the last font, but with a half dozen more points dropped into fancy smanciness. It's got a lot more going on, and can hit that medieval vibe just as easily as it can groove to a newsstand. It may be a bit harder to tell what letter has been drop capitized, but hey, readers should be able to figure it out from context clues, right? Sometimes legibility is the price of swag, as the hip cool kids say.
This next font is WW2Blackletter, which comes in two different versions (as pictured above): pointy bottom version, or swoopy bottom version. WW2Blackletter is a super duper fun font, and very unique. Just look at that sucker. Lots of character. Grungy. Gritty. Daring you to walk to through the dark forest to the black castle on the night of the full moon. It's definitely a font that requires careful pairing with the right story. Kind of like a guest that shows up covered in fake blood, dressed in all black with a cloak and a set of plastic fangs in their mouth. On any other day, it might seem out of place. But for Halloween, it's perfect.
Okay, now for something a little more different. Takota is a nice brush stroke font. Simple and straight to the point, very bold, easy to read, and works well for more modern texts. Just looking at this drop cap, you can practically feel the thick ol' paintbrush in your head, bristles dripping with fresh paint, as you delicately tap that 'T' key on your keyboard.
I had to of course include at least one script font with some nice swoopy cursive letters. This is Exmouth, a font which I haven't gotten a chance to use a lot of yet, but of which, I am very much enjoying the swoopiness. Fonts with exaggerated flourishes like these are great for period pieces and literary classics. They look like something a handsome gentleman suitor would sign at the end of their letter confessing their deep, unrequited love. Big swoopy cursive letters like these, however, can be a pain to work with as drop caps. They're drama queens. Queen Bees. That mean girl from that one movie that always dresses in coordinated pink. For this example here, I had to adjust the size of the drop cap and add in some extra space between the T and the H so that the drop cap wouldn't be thrusting itself into that first line. If you have the time, it can definitely be worth it to use curved/slanted drop caps like this. They just usually require a bit of fandangling to play nice with the other letters.
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Aaaand that brings up to the end of the list! I was actually going to include some more fonts, but I think this post has reached enough heights as a wall 😅 (maybe I'll have to do a Part 2.5). I was also a bit more limited in what fonts I could recommend, as I wanted to make sure they were all 100% free for use, personal or commercial. If you made it to the end, thanks for reading, and I hope this was helpful!
I was approached by the epic new gaming magazine, A Profound Waste of Time to design a set of twelve drop caps and a variety of decorative motifs for to as part of their limited edition first edition.
The drop caps were inspired by medieval woodblock prints and depict characters and key items from the cult classic game Shovel Knight by Yacht Club Games.
The brief was to visually translate the reduced bitmap style of the game's elements into their rich woodblock equivalents while remaining faithful to the original characteristics. The illustrations were drawn around a set of letters I designed in the style of 16th century initials.
The designs were also shortlisted to feature in Typism Book 4.
See more lettering and Typography at Jamie Clarke Type
something a little different. this was a typography assignment to do illustrated drop caps for a city or state. I chose my favorite kansas city wildflowers, wavy leaf thistle and queen anne’s lace.
Been working on some fun drop caps for my hand lettering class, really digging how some are coming out. i even have a whole alphabet poster that i’m working on that will be uploaded soon.
