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