Kerning secrets
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- OSFA
Kerning is always a fun debate here at work and there are many of you here that are awesome at it. What are your secrets? Tips?
- acescence0
make it look right
- Ramanisky20
or make it look right-tight
- oldelpaso0
i am awesome
whats kerning?
- bulletfactory0
this is fun to play around with
http://typography.art.udel.edu/though on some, take their expert "answer" with a grain of salt.
- Nairn0
learn to squint and when to walk away.
- gramme0
print it out, look at it upside down until you see shapes and not letterforms.
I think johndiggity recently articulated something that I use: there are three basic types of spacial relationships created between words. There is round/round, round/square (or upright, etc. whatever you want to call it), and square/square. The latter gets more space when tweaking kerning; the previous (round/square) gets a bit less; and round/round gets the tightest kerning. Respective examples would be b/o, b/k, l/k and so on.
I've also learned that space relationships change as you increase or decrease the tracking. Particularly in letterforms like "K", "L", and "R" which often require some re-drawing of letterforms in closely-tracked settings, but not necessarily when the spacing is tracked out.
- OSFA0
hhmmm, interesting gramme.
- letters20
lots of time and patience.
and lots of prints.
- skt0
That sounds about right to me gramme. But then I just try and do it by eye, then post it on a board and get about 20 different opinions and confuse the hell out of myself.
- adamm0
My dad told when I was young...
Righty tighty, lefty loosely
- letters20
as for turning the typography upside-down, thats fine for visual relationships, but it does nothing for kerning in respect to legibility. We can look at letters any way we want, but we *read* the space between letters, and when those spaces are inverted they don't read properly and thus can't be adjusted in this respect.
I do agree that its usefull to look at typography upside down to get a sense of balance in form, though only in this respect and not in terms of legibility.
- 23kon0
print it out, look at it upside down until you see shapes and not letterforms.
gramme
(Apr 30 07, 06:32)
----------one of the reasons i have never been a "reader", i dont get much from words in themselves, i just see them as blocks of text making a shape and it distracts me.
i could count the amount of books i have read in my life on one hand.some kind of typoragphy related disability.
seriously!
- skt0
that is a really sad story.
- 23kon0
'reading' the printed word does nothing for my imagination.
give me pictures/audio/video anyday.
i see reading as a waste of time doing nothing, when i could either be doing something a lot more constructive/creative or sleeping.
- FrdmOfSpch0
writing?
- 23kon0
was that to me?
nah not writing.
designing/drawing/making music/taking photos/
- kelpie0
'reading' the printed word does nothing for my imagination.
give me pictures/audio/video anyday.
i see reading as a waste of time doing nothing, when i could either be doing something a lot more constructive/creativ e or sleeping.
23kon
(Apr 30 07, 06:50)that's a shame mate. truly.
- canuck0
Sounds like you have some type of learning disability.
- vespa0
agree w kelpie and skt, there's a lot more room for imagination in reading!
and doesn't everyone see words as sets of shapes, and that's how we speed read?
unless you see Special shapes, 23kon?