: Are faux small caps now considered OK? Bringhurst writes that small caps need to be designed to visually match the standard capitals of a font, so that the resulting mixed caps look uniform

@Murray976

The main issue in your examples is not the mixed caps themselves, but how they were used. As tk32 mentions, thicker-stroked first letters can be a deal breaker, but 'real' mixed caps can look nice:



This exam­ple uses scaled down cap­i­tal let­ters, and that's why the thick­ness of their strokes look disproportionate. Your two examples have this problem. It is a small difference, but it might explain why your examples didn't feel right to you. This is particularly noticeable in the embassy sign, where you can see how thick the first caps look compared to the others.



This one on the other hand uses small caps specially designed to har­mo­nize with the big cap­i­tals. They have the same stroke thickness.


Small cap­i­tal let­ters mixed with full-caps have a cer­tain regal
qual­ity to them. When not overused and prop­erly tracked
(let­ter­spaced), mixed cap­i­tals are great for cap­tions and
headlines.




I can think of situations where they could work. This one came to mind:



And here's a very enlightening article on mixed caps: Alec's Julien Small Caps.

Images source.

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@Megan533

They are most certainly not OK with me; I'm totally with Bringhurst on this. I hate seeing small caps with significantly thicker-stroked (enlarged) first letters.

P.s. For those unacquainted, we are referring to Robert Bringhurst's seminal work on typography 'The Elements of Typographic Style'

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