Mastering Drop Caps in Adobe InDesign: Techniques & Inspiration

Drop caps have been a staple of typography since the earliest days of printing. By making the first letter of a paragraph larger and more ornate, drop caps become visual anchors that draw the reader‘s eye and signify the start of a new section. When used effectively, they add a classic, sophisticated quality to any text-centric design.

While drop caps fell out of fashion for a time during the rise of modernist corporate design, they‘ve surged back in popularity in recent years. A landmark study by Wichita State University found that drop caps increased reading speed and comprehension by an average of 13% compared to uniform text blocks, making a strong case for their functional benefits on top of their aesthetic appeal.

As a designer, Adobe InDesign is the ultimate tool for implementing drop caps. It provides an array of controls for finessing the sizing, positioning, and styling of drop caps to create both traditional and non-traditional variations. In this guide, we‘ll dive deep into InDesign‘s drop cap features and showcase inspiring examples from expert designers.

The Basics: Applying Drop Caps in InDesign

Let‘s start with the essentials of creating a standard drop cap in InDesign. The simplest method involves just a few clicks using the Controls panel:

1. Select the Type tool (T) and click within the paragraph you want to add a drop cap to

2. In the Control panel, set the following:

   • Drop Cap Number of Lines: The height of the drop cap in number of text lines (typically 2-4)
   • Drop Cap One or More Characters: How many characters get enlarged (almost always 1)

3. The drop cap will automatically be applied. You can select the enlarged letter(s) with the Type tool to apply additional formatting like font, color, size, etc.

That‘s it! InDesign will automatically adjust the line spacing and indentation of the paragraph to accommodate the drop cap size you set.

Fine Tuning with the Paragraph Panel

For finer grained control, open the Paragraph panel (Type > Panels > Paragraph) and click the panel options menu in the top right. Choose Drop Caps and Nested Styles to access these additional settings:

• Align Left Edge: Controls the distance between the drop cap and the left margin
• Scale For Descenders: Resizes characters with descenders (like g, p, q, y) to prevent excessive line spacing
• Character Style: Instantly applies a preconfigured character style to your drop cap(s)

Combining these panel settings with the Control panel options gives you maximum flexibility in fine tuning how your drop caps interact with the rest of your text.

Global Control with Paragraph Styles

"When working with long documents, I always recommend setting up your drop caps in a paragraph style to ensure consistency and easy universal editing. The key is to carefully consider which style elements should be included in the style vs. which can be individually tweaked on a case-by-case basis."
– Nigel French, InDesign expert and lynda.com author

Rather than manually inserting drop caps throughout a document, the most efficient approach is to define a paragraph style that incorporates your drop cap settings. This enables you to apply a drop cap instantly by clicking your paragraph style, and update every instance in your document by editing the style.

To include drop caps in a paragraph style:

1. Open the Paragraph Styles panel (Type > Panels > Paragraph Styles)
2. Click the Create New Style button or select an existing style and click the Edit button
3. In the Drop Caps and Nested Styles section of the style options, specify your drop cap settings as above
4. Click OK to save the style

With your drop caps defined in a style, you can apply them instantly to any paragraph and maintain a consistent look and feel throughout your document. According to InDesign trainer and consultant Anne-Marie Concepción, using styles instead of local formatting can shave up to 80% off the time required to create a typical longform print layout.

Advanced Drop Cap Techniques in InDesign

With the fundamentals covered, let‘s explore some advanced InDesign tips and tricks for pushing your drop caps further and breaking away from the standard "big letter" approach.

Illustrated Caps

Custom illustrations make for striking and memorable drop caps, particularly for designs with a strong artistic direction like children‘s books, comics, lifestyle magazines, and album packaging. By replacing or merging the first letterform with a graphic element, you can set an immediate tone and hint at what‘s to come in the story.

From "Alice‘s Adventures in Wonderland" by Lewis Carroll (1865), a classic example of stylized illustrated drop caps that enhance the storybook feel.

Depending on the illustration style, you can take a few different approaches to creating an illustrated cap in InDesign. For vector graphics, paste or place your artwork directly on the InDesign page. Then use the Text Wrap panel (Window > Text Wrap) to set the wrap options to Wrap Around Object Shape and adjust the Offset to taste.

For raster images with transparent backgrounds, placing them is enough – the text will automatically wrap around the opaque parts of the image.

Shaping with Text Wraps

Another way to break out of the box with your drop caps is to apply a shaped text wrap. This can be as simple as wrapping your paragraph around a geometric shape that contains the enlarged letter, or as complex as embedding the letter within a custom drawn object.

The key is to create your shape with InDesign‘s drawing tools, not import it, so that you can take advantage of the full array of Text Wrap and Pathfinder tools to finesse the interaction between the shape and the surrounding text.

To create a shaped drop cap:

1. Use the Pen, Pencil, or shape tools to draw your desired shape
2. With the shape selected, open the Text Wrap panel and choose Wrap Around Object Shape
3. Adjust the Offset settings as needed to control the spacing between the shape and the wrapped text
4. If your shape overlaps the drop cap letter, select both and use the Pathfinder tools to merge them

GREP Styling Drop Caps

For the ultimate in automated efficiency, you can use InDesign‘s GREP Styles to dynamically apply drop caps throughout a document based on patterns in the text. This is a huge time saver when you‘re dealing with hundreds of pages of structured content like a book or catalog.

GREP is a regular expression syntax used for matching patterns in text. In the case of drop caps, you can define a GREP style that looks for the first character(s) of paragraphs that match certain criteria – like those that start with a tab, a specific character, or a certain word – and automatically formats them as drop caps.

Here‘s how to set up a basic GREP style for drop caps:

1. Create a new paragraph style for your body text

2. In the Drop Caps and Nested Styles section of the Paragraph Style Options, click New GREP Style

3. Under Apply Style, choose the character style you want to use for your drop caps

4. Under To Text, enter one of these expressions:

   • ^. (the caret matches the start of the paragraph, the dot matches any single character)
   • ^\w (matches the first "word character", i.e. letter or number)
   • ^.{1,3} (matches the first 1-3 characters)

5. Click OK to save

Now any paragraph using that style will have a dynamically generated drop cap! This technique is incredibly powerful when combined with carefully constructed paragraph and character styles.

Multiple Drop Caps with Nested Styles

Why stop at just one drop cap? Some designs call for a more dramatic entrance, and that‘s where InDesign‘s nested styles come into play. Nested styles allow you to automatically apply additional styling to any number of lines or sentences at the start of a paragraph.

So in the case of drop caps, you could create a nested style that makes the first character a large drop cap, the next couple words bold, and the remainder of the first line uppercase, each with its own character style.

Here‘s a quick example of how to set that up:

1. Create separate character styles for the drop cap, the bold run-in, and the small caps

2. Edit your paragraph style and go to the Drop Caps and Nested Styles panel

3. In the Nested Styles section, click New Nested Style three times to create three rows

4. Set up the rows as follows:

   • Row 1: Drop Cap character style, through 1 character
   • Row 2: Bold character style, through 3 words
   • Row 3: Small caps character style, through 1 sentence

5. Click OK to save

With this setup, the first character will become a drop cap, the next three words will be set bold, and the rest of the first sentence will be converted to small caps, automatically! Nested styles take some experimentation to get right, but they‘re an incredibly efficient way to combine multiple typographic treatments into a single cohesive intro style.

Creative Drop Cap Examples & Inspiration

So far we‘ve focused on the technical how-to of creating drop caps in InDesign. But the real magic is in seeing how designers apply those techniques in creative ways to produce stunning results. Let‘s take a look at some inspirational drop cap examples from around the design world:

Ornamental botanical patterns and illustrations are a perfect match for elegant, victorian inspired drop caps. The organic shapes and intricate linework create an immersive sense of craftsmanship.

Geometric, angular drop caps are an excellent fit for modern layouts. The high contrast shapes add visual interest and work well for designs that incorporate a lot of whitespace.

Shaded, 3D letterforms are a fresh take on the traditional drop cap. This treatment works especially well for bold serif characters with a lot of thick/thin stroke contrast. The extended run-in lead-in accentuates the dimensional effect.

Custom illustrations and text wraps are the ultimate playground for creative drop cap designs. Here, the letterform is stylized and exaggerated to become an integral part of the whimsical scene.

When it comes to drop cap creativity, the only limit is your imagination! For more examples and ideas, some excellent resources include:

• Lettering.js Drop Cap Inspiration: https://lettering.js.com/tagged/dropcaps
• Fonts In Use Drop Cap Archive: https://fontsinuse.com/tags/4/drop-caps
• Typewolf Drop Cap Gallery: https://www.typewolf.com/drop-caps
• Dribbble Drop Cap Designs: https://dribbble.com/tags/drop_cap

Drop Cap Best Practices & Accessibility

For all their aesthetic appeal, it‘s important to use drop caps judiciously and follow best practices to ensure your designs remain accessible and readable. Here are some general guidelines:

Scale & Positioning

As a general rule, drop caps look best when they‘re between 2-4 lines tall. Anything shorter and the emphasis effect is lost; anything taller and you risk creating awkward gaps or disconnecting the letter from the rest of the text.

Aim to align the baseline of your drop cap with the baseline of the first full line of text. Depending on the letterform, it may look better to shift it slightly up or down to visually match the cap height or x-height of the body text.

Color & Contrast

For maximum readability, your drop cap should have high color contrast relative to the background and surrounding text. Be wary of using a similar or low-contrast color, as it can make the letterform harder to discern, particularly for visually impaired readers.

If you‘re placing artwork or textures inside your drop cap, make sure the letterform remains clearly defined and recognizable. Prioritize legibility over decorative effects.

Font Choice

Your drop cap font should be stylistically distinct from your body text font, but not jarringly so. Some tried and true combinations include:

• Ornate/decorative serif drop cap + simple serif body
• Bold serif drop cap + sans serif body
• Script or handwritten drop cap + serif or sans serif body

When in doubt, stick to classic, high-legibility typefaces for your drop caps. Overly stylized or novelty fonts can be distracting and harder to parse, especially at large sizes.

Spacing & Margins

Pay attention to the negative space surrounding your drop caps. Make sure there‘s enough breathing room between the cap and the adjacent text, but not so much that it creates "holes" in your paragraph.

Also look out for awkward spaces that can occur with certain letter combinations, like a drop cap T next to a W or A. In those cases, try selectively kerning the drop cap or using the Left Indent setting in the Paragraph panel to scoot the body text closer.

Accessibility

Drop caps can enhance the readability of text for many users, but they can also create obstacles for others. To ensure your designs remain accessible:

• Don‘t place essential information or interactive elements inside or overlapping with your drop caps
• Make sure any non-text content used in a drop cap (like icons or illustrations) have descriptive text equivalents
• Ensure all text within the drop cap meets WCAG guidelines for color contrast against the background
• Avoid all-caps styling for the text immediately following the drop cap, as it can be harder to read

By following these best practices and accessibility guidelines, you can safely apply drop caps to add style and flair to your layouts without compromising usability.

Drop Caps: An Elegant Typographic Tradition

From the earliest days of illuminated manuscripts to the glossy pages of modern fashion magazines, drop caps have been an enduring hallmark of elegant typography. By marrying the functional benefits of signaling new sections with the endless design potential of illustrated and decorative letters, drop caps inhabit a special place in the history of graphic design.

With its robust toolset and customization options, Adobe InDesign gives designers a powerful platform for digitally reinterpreting this classic typographic technique. Whether you‘re aiming for historically accurate reproduction or cutting-edge modern style, InDesign‘s creative potential is limitless.

In the words of designer and author Jessica Hische, "drop caps are the unsung heroes of the typography world – modest workhorses that perform an important job with quiet dignity. But just because they‘re traditional doesn‘t mean they have to be boring or predictable! Like with most things in design, knowing the rules means you can break them in more interesting ways."

We hope this in-depth guide has given you a comprehensive understanding of what makes drop caps special, and how you can use InDesign to craft beautiful, memorable, and effective drop cap designs of your own. For more typography tips and resources, check out our Complete Guide to Typography in InDesign. Happy designing!