ELiTE caps - NicheInterests/mistfunk GitHub Wiki

This is just one of many stylistic elements of [leetspeak], but it's an important one: there's just something about a lower-case letter i in the midst of other capital letters that screams "early '90s digital [underground]". Warez groups did it (eg. TRSi, DEViANCE, ViTALiTY), consequently artgroups also did it (eg. ACiD, iCE, CiA, TRiBE, NATiON, UNiON, SHiVER, RELiC, iMPERiAL, REALiTY) and inevitably MiSTiGRiS also did it too... indeed, the reassuring regular distribution of elite lowercase "i"s was touted as one of the positive features of this proposed name for our collective (the competing words KiTSCH and KiTHE only had a single lowercase i, and it can't be coincidental that they lost out!)

Where did this deviant (DEViANT?) typographical tendency come from? Possibly there is precedent in graffiti logo design. Certainly in a textual medium where capital Is are mingling uneasily with lowercase ls, number 1s and | pipes, the dotted lowercase i helps to keep the character from being misread. Either way, it does lend a little puckish, playful flavour to an otherwise staid and imposing SERIOUS LOGO in ALL-CAPS. Regardless, this trend was pretty played out by 1995, and we wouldn't see its like again until Y2K marketing droids started hitting us with eCommerce and iPods (2001), which in all have more to do with prefixes and less to do with internal capitalisation.