Cooking the hierarchy
When you write, you're pouring ideas out of your head and onto a page, containing them, standardising them, and readying them to be consumed and understood by someone else. But even the simplest ideas are slimy, wily, tricksy things that like to ooze out of whatever container you put them in. The container you use to transport your ideas needs to be tight and precise, the slightest bit of wiggle room and your idea will change, move around, and come out different to what you intended. And even if you choose the words themselves carefully, there are other contaminants that can change the meaning of your message without your knowledge.
One of these contaminants is capitalising. Wow, I just read that back and it sounds like I'm saying capitals letters are terrible and toxic. I'm not but you would be excused for believing so because random capitals are one of my absolute, irrational pet peeves.
The most common way to misuse capitals is when you try to create a hierarchy within their text. In itself, this is an admirable thing to do. Hierarchies within text aim to call out the most important parts of a sentence and use italics, bold, CAPITALS, or ~symbolic adornments~ to draw the eye. Good visual hierarchy means if someone was scanning your message, they'd pick up on the most important parts. The problem is we are not good at determining the most important part of our message. And the result is usually something like this:
When everything is capitalised, everything is important, and the hierarchy breaks down and becomes more confusing than if your message was just in sentence case. Not to mention your tone becomes very LOUD and YELLY.
If your lust for tall letters is undeniable, try to choose only one part of your message to capitalise per section. If you're struggling to decide which part of your message to capitalise, the answer might actually be nothing. This is just my opinion, but I feel capitalising creates a franticness that often doesn't match the severity of the message. It creates a feeling of hurry that often serves the sender not the receiver. This ☝️ example was, I believe, on an Instagram post for a clothes shop. It assumes their customers are scrolling past in such a hurry they couldn't possibly stop to read a full sentence. And maybe they couldn't, maybe they’re busy. But a customer who wants to visit your store will look up and comprehend your opening times whether you capitalise or not because they don't want to turn up to a closed shop. Food for thought.
And finally, this is what happens when you absolutely cook the hierarchy and accidentally create modern art:
It’s serving primary school, text art assignment realness; I kind of love it but it makes no earthly sense.
TL;DR? Don’t capitalise too much.