33. A Case for Case I: Initial Caps or All Caps: Text Design in Presentations

An article in the New York Times reported on a trend among major corporations to update their brand logos and noted that several of the companies—among them Wal-Mart, Kraft, Stop & Shop, and Cheer—have done so with “striking similarities.” One of the similarities is the conversion from all-caps to initial caps. The Times article described this shift as follows:

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 downturn has prompted a new look that is “non-threatening, reassuring, playful, even child-like. Not emblems of distant behemoths, but faces of friends.”^F33.1

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 the font, colors, or decorative ornaments used. The image sits inert on the 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 model, the graphics play a secondary role—as a headline, leaving the presenter to provide the details in his or her narrative.

As you read in Chapter 26, “Blame the Penmanship, Not the Pen,” the ideal model for the relationship between slides and the presenter is that of television news broadcasts. In that medium, the graphics that accompany any story consist of a simple impressionistic image and very few words of text. The words in the text are usually all-caps as a headline, leaving the newscaster to provide the details of the story. In newspapers and magazines, headlines are often in all-caps, and the body text is in initial caps. Initial caps, as in the illuminated first letter of ancient manuscripts, signal the beginning of a long read.

Headlines are intended to capture attention, and all-caps demands attention. The two most ubiquitous and important attention-demanding signs in the world are “STOP” and “EXIT.” However, because all-caps are more difficult to read than initial caps, if you decide to use them in the text in your presentations, keep that text to four or five words, at a maximum.

Therefore, whether you use all-caps or initial caps—the ultimate choice is individual taste—be sure to default to the headline approach. Do as the television news anchors do: Provide the body text to the headline on the presentation screen.