Kerning: The Art of Adjusting Spacing Between Characters
Kerning is a fundamental concept in typography that involves adjusting the spacing between individual letters or characters in a proportional font to achieve a visually pleasing result. Unlike tracking, which adjusts the spacing between letters of an entire word in equal increments, kerning focuses on the specific spacing between individual letters to create readable text that is visually appealing.
Process and Application
Kerning is a detail-oriented process that requires visual judgment to create the perfect optical illusion, making text more legible, visually appealing, and engaging. It is used to achieve consistent visual spacing between letters, regardless of their shape or size, and is particularly important in designs where text is the primary visual element, such as posters, advertisements, headlines, and typographic logos.
Types of Kerning
- Metric Kerning: This type of kerning directly uses the values found in the kerning tables included in the font file and is commonly provided in most systems with typographic features.
- Optical Kerning: This type of kerning adjusts the spacing between letters automatically based on their visual appearance.
- Contextual Kerning: This refers to positional adjustment that depends on more than two consecutive glyphs, taking into account the spacing of certain glyphs based on both the preceding and following glyphs.
Importance and Considerations
Kerning is essential for creating beautiful, polished designs and is particularly valuable when working with large text intended for a wide audience. It is a subjective art form, and there are no set rules for kerning, allowing designers to exercise creativity and judgment in adjusting the spacing between letters to achieve the desired aesthetic and communication through type.
In conclusion, kerning is a crucial aspect of typography that plays a significant role in enhancing the visual appeal and legibility of text in various design applications. It requires a keen eye for detail and a deep understanding of visual aesthetics to achieve the desired results.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerning https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/design/discover/kerning.html https://www.sketch.com/blog/what-is-kerning/ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365-life-hacks/presentations/what-is-kerning https://webflow.com/blog/what-is-kerning
