Gimme a ...

October 30, 2009 11:48 AM

The Daily Drop Cap is an ongoing project by typographer and illustrator Jessica Hische. Each day (or at least each WORK day), a new hand-crafted decorative initial cap will be posted for your enjoyment and for the beautification of blog posts everywhere.
posted by HumanComplex (18 comments total)

These are ok, I guess. Personally, I prefer the drop caps that you can create using Word's Word Art. A lot of people have complemented me on my 3D Drop Cap in Cyan and Magenta.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 12:01 PM on October 30, 2009

I'm all for giving credit where credit is due, but I'll pass on using these, since I can't imagine having to credit her every time I wanted a drop cap, unless she doesn't consider normal use to be "reposting any artwork." Also, as non-derivative you can't go modifying them.

This is a cool idea though, and it would be neat if she took it further, adding other elements (borders and decorations)
posted by cjorgensen at 12:16 PM on October 30, 2009

A lot of people have complemented me on my 3D Drop Cap in Cyan and Magenta.

Your readership from 1995 is an astute bunch, no doubt.
posted by filthy light thief at 12:19 PM on October 30, 2009

I really like the work, but some of the details are really lost at the small scale. They seem to best work in this format, where you see the letter in large-form, where you can appreciate the delicate hatching or faux-wood details, then see the letter in a paragraph.
posted by filthy light thief at 12:22 PM on October 30, 2009

cjorgensen--Maybe I'm missing something, but her html examples strongly imply that she just wants to be credited in the IMG title. Not exactly onerous to do.
posted by Squid Voltaire at 12:23 PM on October 30, 2009

aw man, they're all flowery and shit. where are the fucking metal ones? I need drop caps that fucking ROCK!

just kidding. these are great.
posted by shmegegge at 12:23 PM on October 30, 2009

The uniform width of the vector graphics line strokes could have used some variation.
posted by scose at 12:25 PM on October 30, 2009

You could always turn the image into a link that goes to the Tumblr page you got the drop cap from.
posted by chunking express at 12:26 PM on October 30, 2009

These are great as illustrations, but on some of them the lines are too fine, so shrinking it down to drop-cap size gives it a blurry look.

Hate to be the crank, but design that doesn't work at its intended scale because the designer was zoomed in at 1600% is a pet peeve of mine.
posted by AlsoMike at 12:37 PM on October 30, 2009 [3 favorites]

I just like these.
posted by The Whelk at 12:38 PM on October 30, 2009

I prefer my online drop caps generated on the fly with CSS and/or a fancy font hack like Cufón. They're not as pretty as these but when you're writing a blog post the last thing you want to think about is your drop cap(s). Better to let the CMS handle it so you can focus on content. I guess if you had a whole alphabet of these pre-made images you could do some server-side substitution, but that still has the downside of a small accessibility hit.
posted by The Winsome Parker Lewis at 1:05 PM on October 30, 2009 [1 favorite]

Oh, stop nitpicking, these are nice.
posted by designbot at 1:25 PM on October 30, 2009 [3 favorites]

@AlsoMike, how do you know what the intended scale was? I think the intended scale and size are how she shows them.


She shows them at two scales. Look at the "B" that's currently at the top. As it occurs in the paragraph of text, it's really rather unattractive; the lines aren't smooth at all. And that's the one that she suggests using, if you use her HTML snippet. The enlarged "B" looks fine.
posted by kenko at 2:01 PM on October 30, 2009

This is not a clipart service, for those of you wishing to get something great and creative for free; it's an example of someone's art. If that works for you, great; if not, shut up and make something yourself.

Thanks for the tip, luriete, but I figured that out 10 years ago, when I started my career as a designer. You aren't doing any favors by treating designers as delicate snowflakes who can't deal with constructive feedback, you're just encouraging self-indulgent "but it looks great for me!" attitudes.
posted by AlsoMike at 2:29 PM on October 30, 2009

Nice work. I drop my cap to you, Jessica.
posted by Kabanos at 3:06 PM on October 30, 2009

For all the fancy curlicues, here's something uncomfortably sterile about these.
posted by aspo at 3:12 PM on October 30, 2009

"Looks suffer at intended scale" is not nitpicking; it's half a letter grade at least.
posted by fleacircus at 3:25 PM on October 30, 2009 [1 favorite]

This looks like a good place for an ALPHABET GAME:

Typography Terms That Sound (kinda) Dirty...

Analphabetic

Ball Terminal

Chromatic Aberration

...next?
posted by evilmidnightbomberwhatbombsatmidnight at 5:37 PM on October 30, 2009