Drop Shadows. The good, the bad, the ugly?

[concentrate]

This topic was imported from the Typophile platform

Throughout my design education I was taught to not use drop shadows – ever. Now, in my day to day job, I have been told numerous times to add drop shadows now and then, often to type. I am sure the same happens to many of you all too.

I am just curious of everyone's opinion of the drop shadow.

[theloneprince]

I personally don't recommend it, especially on logos. The google logo is an example of bad design.
But sometimes drop shadows can add something interesting to pagination when used with sense and taste.

[concentrate]

I avoid them like the plague, but at my job I am the "subordinate" so to speak. I've been working at my job for a few years, and it's definitely not permanent because the long-term goal here is my own business (in progress). Should I just take the "design advice" I'm given with a grain of salt?

[PublishingMojo]

Drop shadows have a purpose, usually to add contrast between letters and background. Google's primary-color theme stuck them with a yellow o that disappears into a white background unless you give it a shadow.
Drop shadows used to be laborious (and therefore expensive) to make, so designers didn't use them very much. When PageMaker, Quark, and Photoshop made drop shadows available at the click of a mouse, designers and designer wannabees went crazy putting drop shadows on everything. (The same thing happened with gradient fills.)
Professors and art directors who lived through the Great Drop Shadow Epidemic of the early 90s often have a phobia about them, but you have nothing to fear if you practice safe specs.

[theloneprince]

I think sometimes it's not worth "putting up a fight". At the end of the day it's just their company and you will end up doing what they want anyway. You can always try and make the design more appealing (though secretly you won't ever like it, haha!)

[Nick Shinn]

I'd take the criticism seriously.
Drop shadows are a quick fix, like MSG.
If your boss feels your work would benefit from a drop shadow, it may be a bit "flat".

However, there are some circumstances where a drop shadow can be quite proper, such as when running type over a lively photograph.

For the Google logo, the drop shadow adds a vernacular, amateurish quality, which is in its way representative of the Web, where so much design is non-professional.

My 2001 take on such "studio techniques": The Bottom Line.

[jwchen]

I always think of drop shadow as the can whipped cream of the design world. Common people like it, professionals avoid them at all cost. To me it's just an effect. Use it well and it will look ok, but 90% of the time it will look amateurish. Personally I can't really pull it off so I tend to tell my client that.

[theloneprince]

jwchen I couldn't agree more.

[chris_mix]

LMAO at "Great Drop Shadow Epidemic of the early 90s"

I think Nick is spot-on about the Google logo. The search portals at the time when Google first appeared were slick, busy, techy looking pages then Google came along with its simple search box.

It looked like the logo had been knocked up in thirty seconds using a pirated copy of Word by a spotty Jolt-drinking adolescent who dreams in HEX algorithms.

I used to think drop shadows could look great, making text float above a page. It's so hackneyed and worn-out now though. Like Nick I'd only really consider using them to help text stand out over a busy picture.

[thranduil]

OOT: Thanks for the article, Nick. It was a good read.

[jwchen]

thanks theloneprince. And thanks nick for your tips and articles. Learned few tricks from you today.

[cuttlefish]

I prefer the close relative "halo" effect, but for the same reasons stated above. It is sometimes useful to drop in what is effectively a soft outline around type to improve contrast over a busy background.

If it's done gently enough, most would hardly notice it's there. Too many people, though, are not so delicate in their use of these effects.

[phrostbyte64]

From the view point of the sign industry, it is always best to create a basic version of any logo without effects. At some point, your client is going to want a sign. If it is a flat, digital print on a substrate, soft drop shadows and textures etc. are not an issue. If it is going to be a back lit sign, or routed sign these special effects pose a problem. If your logo doesn't really look good without the effects, it isn't going to look that much better routed out of brushed aluminum, mounted on a brick wall. Exterior lighted signs with special effects generally turn into visual noise from any distance. Designers don't generally take these conditions into account when creating these really cool effects.

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...from the Fontry

[Ed_Aranda]

As a general rule I try to avoid the need to use them on type, but sometimes they are necessary and if used subtly and tastefully can be a useful tool.

[concentrate]

@PublishingMojo the drop shadow epidemic explains a lot, and was also a hilarious read.

@Nick Shinn I understand what you are saying, but I just don't think that's the issue in this case. Likely more the fact that I happen to work in a mediocre design company that's stuck in a "desktop publishing" style rut where my boss once told me something to the effect of "we aren't here to make innovative design" and how he has a certain "look" for the design we produce at our studio. Sure I'm not totally satisfied with the way the company works and that is also part of the problem, but at the end of the day I have to pay the bills like everyone else. Two and a half years later I've found that the design we output has actually risen in quality, which I'm proud to mention. Still little of it has made it's way to my portfolio due to lack of concept.

@jwchen touché!

[zevbiz]

Does the shadow around the border of typophile count as a drop shadow? :D

[Nick Shinn]

I renovated the Birmingham News nameplate a few years ago, and at the client's request added a drop shadow to help it stand its ground on the page. I also added a "casing" (is that what you call it?)--a hard white line, technically a drop shadow too, between the type and the vignetted shadow. That can give a vignetted shadow more "pop", so that it can be quite discreet--light in tone and without much spread--and yet still do its job. More graphic, less pictorial.

[jwchen]

@concentrateandaskagain there was a cringe du shame when I saw your topic header.

[concentrate]

@Nick Shinn nice usage!

[PublishingMojo]

Nick, thanks for sharing your Birmingham News masthead. Blackletter for a newspaper masthead can be a cliché, but the drop shadow gives it a fresh look.
Blackletter is so unlike the letterforms that modern English speakers are used to reading that we often see it as a decorative pattern before we see it as words. For some reason I don't completely understand, the drop shadow makes the masthead easier to read as words.

[Nick Shinn]

When the Birmingham News started out in 1887, it had a nameplate in Roman type, all caps.
But that was just before the Arts and Crafts vogue, so it was then changed to blackletter, and my renovation was a cleaning up of a degenerated version of the original blackletter nameplate from around 1900.

It's really the large skyboxes above the nameplate that necessitate the extra type treatment.

[Quincunx]

I don't try to avoid it. If it works in a certain job, I'll use it.

To say you cannot under any circumstance use drop shadows sounds a bit pretentious to me, fundamentalistic even.

[jakes]

Actually I think drop shadow is great if you do creative work for gaming/entertainment industry.

[1985]

I always wondered why there was drop shadow on the Mac desktop but not in the folders. I presume it is because a lot of people use images as a desktop background, but I just want it white like a window and without drop shadow!

[mosh]

Saying that using a drop shadow "is a no-no" is being a fundamentalist, indeed. I mean, it is just another graphic element which can sometimes help / enhance a visual.