80 Technique

Creative skills Typography

03 Have developed a
Creative Suite new microsite for
Nokia’s flagship
stores. The site aims

Perfect
to allow customers
engage with the phone
in a memorable way,
befitting of some.

your kerning
skills
Kerning is crucial to
producing beautiful
typography. Tom Sewell
of Red Design shares his
recommendations for
perfect letter spacing
Kerning is the art of spacing individual characters in a
word so that they sit in correct relationship to one another,
creating a subtle harmony and rhythm. In the increasingly fast-
paced world of graphic design kerning is often underrated and
forgotten. While it is one of the hardest arts for a designer to master,
it can be involving and interesting – and yes, even fascinating.
Above all, kerning feels like a true craft. Explaining it to 01 Tracking and kerning are 02 Every font has a kerning table
someone who’s not a designer often elicits raised eyebrows and two terms that often prove to be within its digital file. The designer of the
cries of “Why bother?”. But it’s the subtleties in typesetting that interchangeable but in fact should never font has to set up basic figures between
distinguish competent work from true typographic beauty. That be confused. Tracking refers to the pairs of letters in plus or minus
said, to be truly great at kerning takes years of practice. There are amount of space between all the thousandths of an em. For example, the
some really simple things that will help you no end and get you characters in a word or sentence, combination VA in Adobe Helvetica has
started down the path of the obsessive kerner. regardless of the shape of the individual a figure of -80, while ry has a figure of
characters, while kerning specifically 30. There can be thousands of kerning
refers to characters’ relationships with pairs within a font’s digital file.
their neighbours.

Tom Sewell Red’s clients include Time needed

Tom Sewell is a Sony PlayStation, 30 minutes
designer at Island, Polydor, Skills
Brighton-based Red Mercury and EMI Kerning
Design. The studio Records, and luxury
has traditionally fashion house
worked for clients in Tanner Krolle. See
the music industry, www.red-design.
but is expanding into co.uk.
fashion, moving 03 Photoshop, InDesign and 04 Capital T, V, W and Y are
image and Illustrator include an optical kerning always problematic. Because their
interactive work. function that applies alternative kerning strokes and arms angle or extend
information to your text. The programs outwards, when they’re used at the
look at the physical shape of selected beginning of a word any following lower-
characters and work out new kerning case letter needs tucking under the arm
based on the characters next to them, or stroke slightly to avoid a nasty gap.
automating what you would normally do
manually by eye. Simply select your text
and in the Character palette change
‘Metrics’ to ‘Optical’.

Computer Arts May 2008 www.computerarts.co.uk

ART148.tut_3 80 17/3/08 19:40:34

 81

05 A neat trick when kerning a word is to imagine that
between each letter there are balloons of equal size and
volume, forcing the letters apart. Aim to space the letters so
that the balloons fit exactly between them without being
squeezed out above and below.
06 One of the most basic mistakes you can make when
typesetting is to forget the number 1. Virtually every font’s
kerning table seems to ignore 1, so the character tends to have
massive spaces before and after it. For this reason, the kerning
always needs tightening.

08 In InDesign or Illustrator, select the Type tool and

07 The number 7 is another character that can cause problems. The way its
vertical stroke is angled left creates a large gap of negative space, especially when
placed next to a full point. So it’s wise to tuck the point under the 7 a little bit.
click on the gap between two characters. Then if you hold down
Alt you can use the left and right arrows to adjust the space
between them. By default the increment applied with each
press of the arrow is 20 thousandths of an em, but you can
adjust this preference for tighter control.

10 When kerning you can never quite trust what your

09 Always consider the spaces before and after the word you’re working on and
ensure that they are spaced correctly visually. A good rule of thumb is to imagine that
the character o sits between each word.
monitor shows you. The resolution is just not high enough for
you to judge things perfectly, so when kerning is really critical
(such as in a logo) always print a proof to double-check.

www.computerarts.co.uk Computer Arts May 2008

ART148.tut_3 81 17/3/08 19:40:40