Kerning lecture - To Kern or not to Kern

to kern or not to kern

Today I had a lecture about kerning and things not to do and things to do when it comes to kerning. Kerning can change the meaning and look of a type depending on how tightly kerned they are together or how far apart they are from each other. Here are some examples or good and bad kerning; 

This is an example of some bad kerning because,' from afar the 'c' and 'I' blur in this insurance company's billboard leading a lot of people to read cover their homes in a 'dick' rather than a 'click'. To fix this i would say to use a thicker font, and to space them out better to, so it makes it more clear for the public to read. 

This is another example of a bad kerning because,' of how tightly the letters are kerned together there are not spaces so it reads '10 fuckering lights' instead of saying '10 flickering lights'. To solve this simple problem the characters need to be spaced out more to make it more clear in what they want to communicate. 

This example below is showing some good kerning we can see this because, of the use of spacing between the letters and that when you look at it, that it doesn't look odd or a bit strange.

What is kerning? 

Kerning in typography is the process of adjusting the spacing between characters in a proportional font, usually to achieve a visually pleasing result.

kerning facts

• Back in the day when people still used to use typewriters, you never had to worry about kerning as there was an automatic set space between the letters/numbers. 
• Kerning is different depending on the typeface you choose to use. 

• Bad kerning tends to happen when it comes to punctuation and in some case certain letters such as; l,a,p,t ,u ,y ,a ,y , and o when they are next to some letters.
• Kerning is also found in glyphs .

There are three types of kerning 

1. Optical - Optical kerning uses the form of the characters in the actual font and sets the kerning according to that for the best result. Metric kerning uses the built in kerning pairs in the actual font to set the kerning and where ther is none, you do it manually. 
2. Metric - Metric kerning uses kerned pairs,which are included in most fonts. Kern pairs contain information about the spacing of specific pairs of letters. Some of these are: LA, P., To, Tr, Ta, Tu, Te, Ty, Wa, WA, We, Wo, Ya, and Yo. 
3. Manual - This is when you manually adjust the type yourself, this is known to be the most accurate way to adjust kerning in type. 

then watched a video called

This video is about painted type and it's history and it touches on kerning and how essential it is to kern perfectly to avoid logos or typefaces to be misunderstood by the public. 

https://vimeo.com/81921161

count down kerning 

After having a lecture, we then we're told to divide into groups of four and we're told to choose vowels and consonants and we had to use the letters to kern them like a company we we're given every thirty seconds and had to either take a photo or draw around the letters, here are some of the companies we did; 

This was are first attempt at kerning. The company that we first tried was a makeup company called 'Mua' so we kept the kerning regular and not to cramped together as we thought it would be clearer and that it looks more professional when it is spaced  out in a regular format.

This is another word that we had to change the kerning with, but this time we could form any random word and make it look like the word they then said which was 'condoms' this is the results that we got this below.

In this type we tried to make 'I' insinuate a penis and then using the letter 'N' over the top to make it look like a condom going over the top. We also rearranged the type into a shape of a condom. The second picture below is arranged so the characters are on top of each other are quite close together. 

We did another type which again we had to choose a random word and then construct it too look like a, nightclub,cafe and clothes shop these are these results;

The first typeface we thought for a nightclub to keep it simple and allegeable, so it's clear to see,smart and sophisticated. Also when you shrink it down to a smaller size you will be able to see it.  

The second wire logo  is for a cafe. We wanted again to keep it basic so when shrunk down on to takeaway cups or packaging the type would still be allegeable and easy to read, we also wanted to keep it modern and a little hipster by turning the letter a upside down and putting a full-stop at the end.

The bottom wire logo was for a clothing brand which we labelled as the 'teenage area' as we made the type look fun and bouncy, full of energy to symbolise teenagers, we also made the kerning tight to make it look friendly.