By Sueann Hoppock - Graphic Designer at Xapsis Integrated Marketing
And the answer should always be YES! As a designer and a font fanatic, I know the importance of kerning and am always astounded at how abundant it is. Just look at the signs and ads around you…it's practically an epidemic!
What is kerning, do you ask? Kerning is the spacing between the letters of a word. And why is that so important? I would argue that it's important for two reasons, one being that bad kerning can affect readability and the other being that it just looks sloppy and unprofessional. And in case you're wondering, it's also one of my designer pet-peeves.
In the old days, bad kerning could be excusable being as they had to typeset letters individually on a printing press so each one had to be uniform, and the same could be said for the letter spacing on the more modern typewriter as well. But in this age of the computer, kerning is right at your fingertips. And while automatic kerning on the computer is better than it used to be, it still needs some tweaking from time to time.
Here's an example:
As you can see, by simply adjusting some of the space between the letters, you get a word that the eye can easily scan for maximum readability and that looks so much more cohesive. This is especially critical for ads that are extremely large like billboards. That gap between the P and e may not look like much on a small web page, but blown up to 8 feet wide and that small gap becomes the Grand Canyon.
Now that you know what to look for, test out your own kerning skills by playing this online game at http://type.method.ac/# and soon you'll be kerning like a pro.
