why the headlines are lowercase

From 1925 the Bauhaus printed its stationery in lowercase only, and added a line of small type at the bottom to explain. The gist, in English: we write everything small because it saves time; besides, why two alphabets when one does the job? why write big when you cannot speak big?

Herbert Bayer, who ran the printing and advertising workshop, designed the alphabet that went with it. He called it universal: one case, built from circles and straight lines, with a single-story a and a round o that is a true circle. It was never cut as metal type in his day. It did not need to be; the idea traveled on its own.

three arguments, one still good

Bayer's case had three parts. Economy: one alphabet means half the sorts in the type case and half the keys to learn. Logic: speech has no capitals, so why should writing. Modernity: in German, where every noun takes a capital, dropping them was a real break with the old page, far more radical than it sounds in English.

The first two arguments are weak now. Keyboards do not care how many cases exist, and writing has never been a recording of speech. The third argument has turned into something else, and it is the one we keep: what lowercase does to the voice.

the register

Set the same words three ways. In capitals they shout. In title case they announce, like a sign over a door. In lowercase they state. For a brand about learning something slowly, stating is the right register. The headline is not an event; it is a sentence somebody is saying to you.

It also makes a headline into one shape. Capitals break a line into peaks and valleys; lowercase runs along the x-height with a few ascenders, so the line reads as a bar of text with a texture, which is what a poster wants and what a hero wants.

where capitals come back

Long reading is different. Capitals are signposts: the start of a sentence, a name, the place where a new thought begins. Over three words they are noise; over nine hundred they are what lets the eye skim and land. So this journal is set in sentence case, and so is every label, button and message in the product. Lowercase is for the outside of things: titles, poster lines, the wordmark, section heads. Sentence case is for the inside, where people read.

Names keep their capitals everywhere except in a display line, where bauhaus and poppins sit lowercase on purpose, as parts of the design rather than as citations.

setting it

• Tighten the tracking as the size grows: minus three percent at 96, minus one at 32, nothing at body size. Lowercase has no capitals to fill the gaps, so it needs a touch less air than title case.
• Never letterspace lowercase at small sizes. It falls apart into letters.
• Stack lowercase lines a little tighter than capital ones. Ascenders and descenders interlock, so the lines can sit closer without touching.
• Use a single-story a and a round o. Poppins has both, which is most of why it is our typeface.