A Super Future in Lower Case
I forget where I heard about superfuture, but it’s a site about design, fashion, shopping and food for people way cooler than me. I’d find you a site blurb, but there’s nothing resembling boiler plate text on the About page.
As far as I can gather, they feature reviews of cool independent shops and restaurants, as well as hosting an active forum for people into that kind of thing.
I checked out their Vancouver page, and they’ve got about 30 listings for the hip shopaholic. I like that they organize their city pages by neighbourhood–very handy. It’d be even handier if they provided a Google Maps mash-up which indicated where each neighbourhood was located.
The Case Against Lower Case
And now my pet peeve. The entire site (with the exception of the forums) is written in lower case. There’s not a capital letter in sight. In fact, you’re obligated to write this way if you contribute to the site.
I have indistinct but negative feelings about this. I feel like, unless you’re E. E. Cummings, you’re not smart or cool enough to eschew basic rules of English. The same goes for insisting on signing your name without initial capitals–it looks like an act of humility, but it’s actually pride.
The site doesn’t seem to provide a reason for this aesthetic decision. As a result, I’m left assuming it’s either laziness or some kind of twee, artsy wankery.
I feel differently if you have a LiveJournal with an audience of 5, and you don’t aspire towards a larger one. Or if it’s personal correspondence–use any capitalization style you want. But if you’re actually trying to deliver information to people–no matter how cool those people are–learn to love capital letters.
Hmm…maybe my feelings weren’t that indistinct after all.
