making text look right

One of the most important terms you should have in your typographical repertoire is kerning—the adjustment of space between two individual letters. You can adjust the kerning in a graphic program like Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, or InDesign by increasing or decreasing the kerning value in the Character panel. There are a few auto-kerning tools in the dropdown menu like metric kerning and optical kerning, which adjust the spacing between letters based on their shapes. These are great, quick options if your overall text is looking too squished together or spaced out. These auto-kerning tools can be extremely helpful for everyday text editing, but when it comes to headlines, logos, and other important uses for your text, you will absolutely want to manually adjust the kerning.

Still a little confusing? Watch this helpful video below that will help you decipher between kerning, leading, and tracking.

TYPOGRAPHY TIPS FOR DIFFICULT LETTERS

Letters and numbers have very unique relationships with each other, and kerning does not have a simple mathematical equation for the appearance of equal spacing. The most difficult letters to kern are those that create a lot of negative space, like the diagonal-heavy A, V, and Y. Check out the difference between uniform and custom kerning in the word “WAVY.”

IT’S IN THE DETAILS

 If you use uniform kerning to mathematically space out the letters, there is an obvious visual imbalance to the overall text. The letter V looks a lot closer next to Y than it does next to A. In order to fake the appearance of equal spacing in this example, the kerning between A and V needs to be set to a negative value, and the kerning between V and Y should be much higher. Successful kerning will give the appearance of equal spacing without literally setting equal kerning values.

KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS

In graphic programs like Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, or InDesign, there are a few keyboard shortcuts that will make manual kerning a breeze. With your cursor set between two letters, you can use the left and right Arrow Keys while holding down the Command Key (or Alt for PC) to decrease and increase the kerning values. Just take your finger off the command key to navigate between letters and adjust the kerning until all of the spaces between letters appears balanced. To adjust the tracking of entire words or passages, highlight either the text bounding box or highlight entire words and use the same Command-Arrow shortcuts to decrease or increase the tracking values.

TRY IT OUT!

Think you’ve got what it takes to manually adjust your text kerning? To get started, you can practice online with this awesome kerning  game that tests your spatial judgment against a professional typographer. If you’d rather spend your valuable time somewhere else, you can always hire a designer and delegate your kerning needs to the seasoned pros. 😊