Most common kern pairs

2»

Comments

  • Jay KnoxJay Knox Posts: 1
    Ramiro, you mean every possible combination that is not in use anywhere? Kern pairs such as "rX" and "pY"? There must be 100!s of these (using ! in its mathematical meaning as 'factorial').

    Ramiro was talking about the Latin alphabet, though.  Even given 100 glyphs, there can only be 10,000 possible kerning pairs, right? The math would be: 100 for the first times 100 for the second glyph.  This is on the order of 8 (or maybe 9?) factorial.

    100! (factorial) is more atoms than exist in the known universe.  In order to have that many pairs, we would actually need more individual glyphs than there are atoms in the known universe!  100 factorial is an unfathomably large number, but calculating kerning pairs just requires a 2nd order polynomial.
  • Nick ShinnNick Shinn Posts: 2,129
    edited April 2021

    I designed Oneleigh Italic with a kernless constraint in cap-lc and lc-lc combinations.
    This was possible by using swash forms of the problem caps, and adopting the “reverse angle stress” lower case method of Goudy’s Companion Italic.

    The form of T which I used was styled after a glyph in the nameplate of an American business magazine of the 1920s (the name of which escapes me)—very “Chicago School” of lettering, that I imagined was the work of Oz Cooper.

    I suspect that a certain amount of the old italic letter forms was configured to avoid kerning, given the difficulties that entailed in metal type.

  • I designed Oneleigh Italic with a kernless constraint in cap-lc and lc-lc combinations.
    This was possible by using swash forms of the problem caps, and adopting the “reverse angle stress” lower case method of Goudy’s Companion Italic.

    The form of T which I used was styled after a glyph in the nameplate of an American business magazine of the 1920s (the name of which escapes me)—very “Chicago School” of lettering, that I imagined was the work of Oz Cooper.

    I suspect that a certain amount of the old italic letter forms was configured to avoid kerning, given the difficulties that entailed in metal type.
    I still and will always *love* these “old” experiments of yours. Oneleigh, Merlin et al.
    Surely not “best sellers” but unique. Like Jens Gehlhaar’s Goody (no longer visible anywhere, but I have it as he sent it to me at the time).
  • I also love this thread, as I am studying effective ways of doing kerning in an economic way, to the degree of thoroughfulness desired. Not easy!
  • Just encountered the missing kern that broke the CamelCase's back:

  • Love this!
Sign In or Register to comment.