Xjyuk

Received typographic wisdom holds that blackletter (“Old English”, “Gothic”) text only looks good in lower case or with initial capitalization — never with capital letters in series. However, in the last couple of decades, all-caps blackletter type and calligraphy have become normalized in a few cases where reading speed is unimportant. Specifically, decoration in "cholo" gangster culture and album cover artwork have adopted it, often in laid out in the shape of an arch; examples follow.

Apparently, some designers are doing what was previously forbidden. In light of the cover of the record by No Doubt (a major-label band), has all-caps blackletter gone mainstream? Did breaking the old rule lead to a new understanding?

1. You can't use tattoo art as a reference. Tattoo art often fails to follow any rhyme or reasoning. It's always a one-off and created with the intention of a very narrow audience, not broader viewing. (And there's always someone at hand to immediately say: "No, it says xxxx.")




2. Bad design happens. There's no "Global Design Tribunal" which determines what one must or must not do with respect to design and will punish offenders. – The "Dark Funeral" logo/symbol falls into this to me. It was probably created by one of the band members or their friend who has no formal training and just wanted something which "looks evil". So, they thought that "looked evil". Black metal bands are notorious for horrid type design. I think it is unwise to prescribe traditional training thoughts or guidelines to anything related to music industry or band "logos". They are rarely created by trained designers.




3. Sometimes it may be intentional. The No Doubt album, with it's poor blown-out photo, and bad typography all seem very intentional to me to avoid a "slick" record industry look. Sometimes when bands which are seen as more alternative start bordering upon being seen as "selling out" they go specifically the other direction with design and stage productions to try and curb those comments.

None of this means all cap blackletter is a good choice in general – or a common choice. It's merely a choice they made in your samples.

Received typographic wisdom holds that Blackletter ("Old English", "Gothic") text only looks good in lower case or with initial capitalization — never with capital letters in series

If you ask me (and all sources I have ever read about the matter), the problem is not that all-caps blackletter does not look good. It just is very difficult to read due to the various decorative elements.

Therefore if you do not care about readability that for whatever reason, using all-caps blackletter is at least not completely insane:

• All your examples feature titles, logos, or similar. Not only is only one or two words that are difficult to read, they are usually not meant to be read at all. In particular consider the tattoo: It’s mostly exists to please the wearer (and he has to use two mirrors to see it). Everybody else who gets to see it, probably has enough time to decipher it.



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  One historic use of all-caps blackletter was for printer’s locations on titles, such as here:

  
  
  

  ^(Source)

  
  
  

  

  
  
  

  Again, this is not a case where readability is very important.

  
  


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  Another historic use of all-caps blackletter was for God, Jesus, etc. in religious texts:

  
  
  

  

  
  
  

  

  
  
  

  I think we can safely assume that the authors/typesetters of these texts would not have chosen all-caps here if they considered it ugly. Also, given that this is limited to a very few, usually isolated words, the impact of readability is not big.