In order for messages to be clearly transmitted, many factors play an important role. Depending on the type of communication, factors such as stuttering, poor grammar, bad alignment of letters, incorrect use of punctuation marks, mumbling, and others set apart unclear from clear messages.
Why are all these important? Designers have a major responsibility to make the latter type of communication possible without any obstacle. There are a few notions any designer should be familiar and able to work with: Kerning, Leading, and Tracking.
What is Kerning?
Kerning: Definition
Kerning is the stylistic process that makes you read the first word of this sentence “KERNING” and not “KEMING”. You’ve probably already guessed it. Kerning is the act of adjusting the space between two letters in order to avoid the irregular flow of the words and to improve legibility.
Kerning: Meaning
Back in the good old days, before the current form of typing had been invented, people would use pieces of metal, each having imprinted one letter on them. Now, remember that each piece of metal was the same size. Are the letters the same size? No way, Jose. Imagine that the letter “V” used to have a metal cast as big as the letter “A”. If we wanted to write Avant Garde without kerning the letters, meaning shaping each metal cast so that they fit better, our words would look like this:
Obviously, there is too much space between the letters of AVANT. But after shaping the metal cast, a side of A and V would actually hang out the metal cast so that they could be brought closer together. The result would be the following.
Kerning Typography
In the past few years, Murfreesboro web designers have been creating new fonts. The classic fonts have the process of kerning already incorporated, while new ones either have automatic kerning, or Murfreesboro web designers can play with the spacing between letters as much as they’d desire. Manual font kerning isn’t the best option for many graphic designers, as it takes a good eye to understand how spacing works. This leads us to the next important chapter of this topic:
Bad kerning examples
As the saying goes, we always get what we pay for. While there are amazing graphic designs and typographers who are great at their job but are not always given credit for it, the bad kerning examples always put on a show. We do believe that learning from other people’s mistakes is much wiser than learning from our own failures, that’s why we are bringing into your attention how kerning can go wrong. Judge these examples yourself.
- SA VINGS
- KIDS EXCHANGE
I don’t know what they exchange at this place nor do I want to find out. It sounds just as bad even if I try to guess the correct kerning.
- Travel
That moment when Tra decides to travel without Vel. Bad Murfreesboro web designers ruin relationships.
- Flikering Lights
