Kerning – A Subtle Necessity

{by Andy Suggs} - February 9, 2012

Kerning. Don’t know what that is? Well, it affects you more than you realize and it’s one of those subtle design nuances we pride ourselves on but is often unfortunately overlooked.

Kerning is the negative space between letters. Not the space in between lines of copy vertically, but the space between letters left to right. As computers have made it much easier for people to create materials and call themselves “designers”, our digital friends do not posses the ability to adjust this space as needed. As an example, look at the letters WA vs IR. Just by the nature of the way those letters are constructed, the A and W have a naturally greater gap between them. Thus, when sign shops and quick copy businesses key in copy on their clients marketing materials, the attention to cleaning up this space is often overlooked.

No, you probably don’t notice it, But look at these sentences below and notice the difference when proper kerning is applied:

Are those glaring errors, no. But, they do make a subtle difference and as you use different fonts there can be much evident and have more sever consequences. Here are a few examples:

Think you’ve got the skills? Take a spin at proper kerning here.

If you’d like to read a little more, check out wikipedia’s entry on kerning by clicking here.