What Is Kerning & Why Does It Matter?

Kerning: The Typographic Art of the Space Between Letters

Kerning is the space between two typed letters (or numbers, or any characters, really). Kerning is also the act of adjusting this space between characters. While every front you use (on every platform on which you may use it) has its own built-in kerning measurements, certain programs (especially graphic design programs) allow the user to adjust kerning character pair by character pair.

Before the dawn of the digital age, typesetting was done by setting individual characters, rendered into stamps, next to each other. These stamps typically had a set amount of space around the character. The same exists today with digital typefaces, but letters and numbers and other characters set together with the same amount of space between them don’t always look…right.

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It’s an optical illusion. Too much or too little space between characters can make them harder to read, or just make them look inexplicably off to the human eye.

Kerning & Typefaces & Fonts—Oh, My!

So we’re all on the same page, let’s clear up the difference between a typeface and a font:

• Typeface: A collection of type (letters, numbers, symbols, etc.) that has the same features and design. A typeface may also be called a font family.
• Font: A subset of a typeface wherein the type has the same design and style.

Put another way, let’s look at Microsoft’s longtime default typeface, Calibri. Calibri is a typeface, and within this font family you can select light, regular, and bold versions of the font, as well as italicized versions of each. Those are the fonts that make up the typeface.

Other Kinds of Spacing Between Letters

When learning about and practicing kerning, you’ll likely also come across the concepts of tracking and leading—two other approaches to spacing between letters.

• Tracking is the amount of space between all characters rather than just two. Unhelpfully, this is also sometimes called letter-spacing, adding to the confusion that can arise between tracking and kerning. When a font’s tracking is adjusted, it changes the space between all characters equally and incrementally.
• Leading is the amount of space between the lines of a paragraph. If you’ve spent enough time using Word to write papers, for example, chances are you’ve set the leading within your document to automatically create double-spaced paragraphs.

All these measures of space between letters are important, but tracking and leading are more forest compared to kerning’s trees.

Good Kerning vs. Bad Kerning: How to Tell the Difference

Bad kerning runs rampant—graphic designers even have a name for it: keming (which looks like kerning has itself suffered from bad kerning). If there were hard and fast rules around kerning, every font would automatically generate perfectly kerned character pairs. But because kerning is in many ways a subjective pursuit, the only thing anyone can say with certainty is that kerning is bad if it renders something unreadable.

That leaves a lot of (or a little) space for interpretation.

To Kern or Not to Kern the Space Between Letters

Not every project requires kerning by hand, but there are few that may be better off if you give special time and attention to this detail:

• Headlines. Document headlines—or any time you make a font a larger point size in your document—can change the way the font kerning looks. You may find that you need to adjust the kerning of a headline to make the characters appear to have the same space between them as they do at a smaller point.
• Large formats. Like headlines, large-format projects—think banners and billboards—can create kerning issues. This is because at smaller point sizes, characters need more space between them to be legible. When that same font is blown up to billboard size, kerning that once made it easy to read now makes it look a little sloppy. This is the perfect time to kern by hand.
• Logos. Creating a logo that includes typography requires special consideration for kerning. Not only is it a matter of taste and preference, but you must consider the myriad sizes at which your logo may be printed.

You may also decide to have some fun with kerning to turn a standard font into a customized piece of graphic design. Consider some of your favorite logos or product packaging: You may recognize the font used, but if you tried to recreate it yourself, you wouldn’t be able to achieve it without kerning.

Tips for Effective Kerning

Ultimately, you can choose to adjust the kerning of the typography in any project. Whether it’ll be your first time, or you need a refresher, here are some tips to help you make the most of those spaces:

• Don’t start until you’ve settled on your typeface and font. One size doesn’t fit all, especially when it comes to kerning. You’ll find yourself redoing your work over and over again if you take the time to kern your typography only to decide on a different font in the font family or a whole new typeface altogether.
• Handle leading and tracking first. Just as changing up your font or typeface can throw off any kerning you’ve already done, so too can adjusting your leading or tracking—tracking especially. Do yourself a favor and work from largest to smallest here, in terms of effect: first leading, then tracking, and finally kerning. Once you’ve chosen your font, that is.
• Make sure your point size is on point. As we know, larger point sizes create the need for more attention to kerning. Make sure that you’ve settled on a size for your font before you start kerning—and get ready to spend more time tweaking the larger your point size is.
• Pay special attention to special shapes. While a lot of kerning is in the eye of the beholder, some shapes require more than a brief look. When you imagine that every character has an imaginary box of space around it, some characters are sure to have more space than others. When you start kerning by hand, pay special attention to letters with slants (Kk, R, Vv, Ww, Xx, Yy) and letters with arms or cross strokes (e.g., Ff, Tt, etc.).
• Consider the relationship between shapes. Beside our slanted and armed friends, we have our straight friends and our round friends. A good rule of thumb is that two straight letters need the most space in between them, a straight letter and a round letter need a little less in between them, and two round letters need even less space.
• Try another view. Some pros swear by letting their eyes lose focus then ranging over their work with blurred vision. Others like to print their work. Still others flip their typography upside down and consider kerning from that angle—when it’s just about how the spaces between characters look, since chances are they can’t read the words as clearly or quickly. Taking the time to see your work from a vantage point beyond your screen might unlock some insight around spacing.
• Less is more…but not in the way you think. Less space isn’t always the right move. Characters that are too close together can be hard to read and cause eyestrain. Err on the side of caution and leave more negative space than less.
• Practice makes perfect. Like anything else, the more time you spend sharpening your sense of space when it comes to kerning, the better you’ll be.

Keeping your kerning from looking like keming is all a matter of practice. Thankfully, unless you’re doing some serious design heavy lifting, most of your day-to-day software should have you well-enough covered (but not overlapped).