It's very easy to get carried away with kerning, especially for novices. By temporarily flipping the text frame horizontally, it becomes easier to balance negative and positive spaces without the distraction of reading the word content.
When I was learning hand lettering in architecture school, the emphasis was put on trying to make the area of the space between the letters as even as possible. Obviously examples like TY are an exception, but it was possible to get pretty even looking notes and labels on our drawings. I haven't come across any CAD programs that have kerning - most of them have very poor text controls, not even full justification or variable line spacing - so we have to live with what we have to the detriment of the overall design of the drawing sheet.
Ray, an Australian architect
Thanks for the article. The history was nice, but my big takeaway from this article was adjusting the word/phrase to the least common denominator first...
The first rule of kerning, then, is to find the worst, nastiest, most difficult character pair in the passage and let that set the spacing feel for the rest.
In the past I had gotten stuck trying to figure out how to make a 'TY' pair match the kerning I was setting up. Your explanation makes a lot of sense and will help me in the future. Thanks.
In the long run, mayonnaise
In the long run, mayonnaise is probably not that good for you.
a technique to judge balancing
It's very easy to get carried away with kerning, especially for novices. By temporarily flipping the text frame horizontally, it becomes easier to balance negative and positive spaces without the distraction of reading the word content.
Kerning
When I was learning hand lettering in architecture school, the emphasis was put on trying to make the area of the space between the letters as even as possible. Obviously examples like TY are an exception, but it was possible to get pretty even looking notes and labels on our drawings. I haven't come across any CAD programs that have kerning - most of them have very poor text controls, not even full justification or variable line spacing - so we have to live with what we have to the detriment of the overall design of the drawing sheet.
Ray, an Australian architect
Leitmotif: good tip
Thanks for the article. The history was nice, but my big takeaway from this article was adjusting the word/phrase to the least common denominator first...
The first rule of kerning, then, is to find the worst, nastiest, most difficult character pair in the passage and let that set the spacing feel for the rest.
In the past I had gotten stuck trying to figure out how to make a 'TY' pair match the kerning I was setting up. Your explanation makes a lot of sense and will help me in the future. Thanks.
Avia
Hello
Could you please give an example on how to correct KErn "AVIA"?
I find it very hard to Kern this Word. The "I" is such a blocker.