When you start to design your book, one of the first things you might realize is that the chapter opening pages have the greatest potential for design elements. The rest of the book has to do the duty of conveying the meaning in the manuscript, and we judge book designs by how well they get out of the way of the communication between the author and the reader, while making the book as readable as possible while using distinctive fonts that lend their own imprint to the look of the page.
And since the advent of desktop publishing and page layout software, the favorite decorative element at the beginning of chapters has got to be the drop cap. Many word processors now offer the drop cap as an option, automatically formatting the beginning of the paragraph to accommodate them.
In powerful page layout programs like Adobe InDesign, the control we have over elements like drop caps is truly remarkable, and largely automatic one you’ve formatted your paragraph and character styles to get the effect you want.
Let’s take a look at some solutions for using this design element.
Drop Cap Styles
There are lots of ways to use the drop cap. This page, a sample from my archive of InDesign Book Templates, has a chapter opening in Centaur, text in Adobe Caslon Pro, and a small ornament from the Warnock font. I call this one the “flaming meteor,” but you can give it your own name.
Here we see a 2-line drop cap exactly as it would be if you just pushed the “drop cap” button. It uses the capital of the text font and simply enlarges it to fill the space of 2 lines, here 30 points.
Click to enlarge
I guess it’s okay, but it looks pretty boring to me. It doesn’t add much to the page. To give it some life, I’ve changed the font to Centaur, to mirror the font in the chapter title, and increased the drop to 3 lines. Have a look:
[click to keep reading…]
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