RE:
http://typedrawers.com/discussion/2198/kerning-the-space-to-glyph-and-glyph-to-spaces#latestNick Shinn said:
"In general, I don’t like types that are too smoothly spaced. Mashed potatoes, sure, but not creamed."
Goodness gracious! Do you mean this for text fonts? Are you saying that some kerning "mistakes" make it better or easier to read? This is new to me. If you have some more thoughts, or some examples in one direction or the other, I would appreciate hearing about it.
Even thought I put this in the technique and theory category, what I am interested in is finding text fonts good to read for extensive reading.
Comments
No. I’m saying that type needs to breathe, and fonts in which gaps are closed up—which is the majority of kerning—have the air sucked out of them.
Also, consider the default (above) of Helvetica, compared with InDesign’s “Optical” kerning (below), in which the t-o is closed up, and the r-y is opened. Such is the tacit “kerning mental algorithm” designers employ to even things out, but IMHO it contradicts the inherent balance that the original type design gives to such words. After all, these ur-grot letter forms evolved to their neutral perfection in a kern-free environment.
Below are the unkerned and kerned pairs that FontCreator suggests. The tightness of auto-kerning can be adjusted, and the results can be change manually wherever necessary.
In my opinion, one of the pinnacles of text production was the era of American book publishing in the 1940s and ’50s — publishers like Alfred A. Knopf, Random House, et al., and great composing houses like Plimpton, Kingsport, and MacKenzie & Harris. These texts were nearly all composed on either Linotype or Monotype machines, both of which boasted libraries of now-classic book faces.
But neither of these machine casters employed pair kerning as we think of it today. The Linotype could not accommodate any kerns whatsoever. Although the Monotype could accommodate kerns in the traditional sense of the word (overhangs extending beyond the body), this is not the same as the kind of individual pair kerning that we think of today.
And yet, despite the occasional usual suspect that might catch the eye (To, We, Va, etc.), these unkerned settings remain a high standard of pleasant readability that I think we are still hard pressed to equal today.
Of course, one can’t completely separate the typesetting from the other variables that contribute to making these books what they are; but still, focusing on the type, it makes one think.
I can’t help feeling that, these days, especially among newbies, the role of kerning can tend to get overemphasized at the expense of other fundamentals.
To adopt a different culinary metaphor, pair kerning is like seasoning. A truly great recipe will often need only a dash of salt and maybe a pinch of pepper. And it doesn’t necessarily improve by throwing a bunch of extra herbs and spices at it.
And this is true even if the history of the hot metal era might indicate that the importance of good kerning is overrated. If people hardly ever noticed no kerning, then clearly perfect kerning, even if we don't need it, isn't going to drive people crazy: they won't notice it either.
I don’t think it’s a result of my advanced years, though!
At the time, that was the look, and nobody—clients nor readers—objected.
I've used Word 365 on Windows 10 to set "story" in Helvetica, first with kerning turned off (above) and then with kerning turned on (below):
As far as I know, Word doesn't apply its own kerning, so it seems the default, original kerning of Helvetica agrees with the optical kerning of InDesign.
Either way, in both our examples, the looser "ry" (below) looks much better to me. I do agree, however, that "to" is too tight and would be better off without kerning.
Ori, Helvetica has no original kerning.
Anyhow, my experiment at least shows it's not just the optical kerning mechanism of InDesign, but also whoever digitized Helvetica for Linotype.
The idea came from metal type, after all. Applying kerning to letter combinations like Ya, Yo, and so on, while much more common in phototypesetting, was also on occasion done with metal and wood type, at least in display sizes, by physically cutting the type slugs.
It is precisely because kerning was considered so valuable that it was even done in metal type, despite the difficulty of doing so in metal type, that it is generally considered to be very worthwhile to do in digital type, now that there are no longer practical considerations preventing it. If kerning hadn't been invented until digital type came along, then the suggestion that it isn't really worth bothering with would perhaps meet with a warmer reception.
But, as noted, using the technique of kerning to facilitate setting type in as tight a fashion as attainable, while it may have some validity for attention-getting advertising typography in large display sizes, is indeed something in the deprecation of which for general text typesetting I am happy to join.
The fact that kerning can be abused doesn't mean that kerning isn't a good thing.
This is a crucial point. There is a vast difference between adverting or display typography and running text. The small quantities of words in advertising allow for deliberate individual kerning and tracking to directly affect that bit of text. In long text, we cannot and need not put so much labor into it as type users. Running text should be very close to out of the box use in most cases. Display text almost always needs more adjustment.
I was echoing what I understood to be the original point of Nick’s mashed vs. creamed potatoes statement: that maybe everything doesn’t need to be pair-kerned with everything else, to the nth degree of “smoothness,” to achieve maximum readability (if such a thing even exists objectively) and that such a goal may even be somewhat foolhardy.
I used a glyph spacing factor of 23. If I use one of 25, the t-o pair has negligible positive kerning. With glyph spacing of 23:
* The o-r pair is kerned by -55
* The t-o pair is kerned by -35
* The r-y pair is kerning by +102
Adjusting the glyph spacing factor will tighten or loosen the kerning. The default is 27, but the optimal value varies for different fonts.