Quick Tip: Typography Skills, Basic Kerning
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Quick Tip: Typography Skills, Basic Kerning

on Jun 18th 2012 with 33 comments
Tutorial Details
  • Version: Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator or InDesign
  • Level: Beginner
  • Length: 8:24

What is Kerning and why do I need to know about it? If you’ve ever asked this question, then today’s Quick Tip is perfect for you. You will learn the basics of kerning, why kerning is so important in design and some handy tricks to make kerning easy.

Photo examples by "Caroline", Karla Burr and Francis Chan

 
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By

Rollover to read this author's bio or click through to see a full list of posts by this author.

Kate McInnes specializes in Communication Design and Digital Illustration. Based in Melbourne Australia, she is the Associate Editor of Vectortuts+ and one half of the creative duo McKelly. Find her on Twitter as @bittenbypixels and Blood Sweat Vector.  

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  • Jesus Bejarano

    Ummmmmm… this tutorial was so awesome, that now i am evaluating the kerning from all vetortuts+’s titles, now i am become a typography geek :b.

    • http://bucketothought.com/loungekat/blog/ Kate McInnes
      Author

      Hahhaa, nice ;)

  • http://www.tinocordes.dk/freelance Tino Cordes

    This was great! Kerning was very important too my teachers back at the graphic designer education. That was before InDesign and the Optical “auto” kerning. I’m glad I got to learn how to notice and adjust this manually.

  • http://twitter.com/dianagraphics Diana

    Great! this is a very important topic, as typesetting, because sometimes it is difficult but it is a basic skill for every designer, even illustrators!

  • JanDirk

    I just looked at my bro’s tattoo hahaha need some Kerning!

  • Dennis

    Awesome tuts…this has become an eye opener for me to Kern better and improving my typography skills. Another plus (1) added to my skills.

    Thanks again.

  • http://carlpottsdesigns.co.uk/ Carl Potts

    Excellent tutorial, I’ve been looking for a good beginners level introduction to Kerning for quite some time, hopefully you’ll cover leading in the future :)

    • http://bucketothought.com/loungekat/blog/ Kate McInnes
      Author

      Thanks! I hope to make typography skills a regular part of Vectortuts, so yes, leading is on the way :)

  • Nouman

    That’s a great tutorial. I din’t know this before. Thank you for sharing :)

  • alex

    Great!!

  • manyaldesign

    Why I dont have optical kerning option in CS3?

    • http://bucketothought.com/loungekat/blog/ Kate McInnes
      Author

      Unfortunately it’s a new feature for CS4 :S

  • http://www.arakistudio.com Stuart Araki

    Although I’m guilty of not always kerning, especially if I’m doing something quick and dirty, I try to at least use the optical setting, rather than auto. I like the tip of turning the type upside down. Another tip I use is looking at three letters at a time, instead of just the pair that you’re kerning. It helps me to get a better feeling for color and balance.

  • http://www.stevesims.com Steve Sims – UK Web Designer

    Re the comment above, what is the liklihood of this being introduced into a workable css format?

    • http://tinyurl.com/3elsgqj Kate McInnes
      Author

      I’m not completely familiar with css, but I think there is a way to Kern in css3. If you want to use javascript, you can use http://letteringjs.com/ in conjunction with http://www.kernjs.com/, but again, I haven’t used it before so I can’t say if it works well or not :)

  • http://heart-designs.net/index.php?language=en Maja Pticar

    Awesome tutorial! Very informative, useful and altogether well presented. Great job!
    It hurts my head to think about why I am spending my time on my Faculty, where they just don’t teach this stuff… :(

    • http://tinyurl.com/3elsgqj Kate McInnes
      Author

      Thanks :)

      If you have any topics you would like us to cover, please let me know. I want to teach more design topics in the future.

  • http://CGInMotion.net Chris Corbett

    Wow! Never thought of Kerning before! Thanks, I will be using this in all my future projects.

  • Vafann

    Hi! Thank you for this, it really helped a lot. I do have a question that might be stupid though, I am really new to this.

    If you have a relatively long body copy, do you have to go through every single word and kern them individually, or is there som kind of way to automate the whole thing? :)

    • http://tinyurl.com/3elsgqj Kate McInnes
      Author

      Optical Kerning and Tracking is better for body copy, I’ll be creating a QT on tracking and setting columns of text :)

  • http://inventikasolutions.com Pritesh

    Very helpful article, I believe you did a better job than Optical Kerning.
    Usually I set constant kerning for a word in Photoshop, but from now onwards I’ll take care to see individual kerning, it does really make a difference.

  • md

    this is one of the few good “info” on this site realy .

  • http://www.attitudedesign.co.uk Attitude Graphic Design

    Very important aspect of typography!

  • Sander Lubbers

    Thanks for this. I was wondering about ‘vertical kerning’. Some fonts, for example Rockwell I experimented with has some letters that are not aligned horizontal. The ‘e’ in the word Kerning was just a bit lower then the rest of the letters. Is there a possibility to kern it up a bit?

    Thanks!

  • Michelle

    One of the best tuts ever. Answered all my questions! Thanks.

  • L

    now i see it everywhere :(

  • http://inspiringprint.blogspot.co.uk/ Inspiring Print

    This is a brilliant tutorial. As a newbie to illustrator I didn’t quite know where to start and this is absolutely perfect. I know that when I downloaded free fonts in the past I noticed the massive spacing in the letters but never understood the technical term for adjusting them accordingly. Thanks!

  • chung dempsey

    great tutorial, so useful!

  • http://twitter.com/zmgcreative Jason Graham

    Thank you so much for this! I’ve heard the term “kerning” before, but have never been 100% sure on what exactly it entailed. For such a short tutorial its amazing how helpful it was.

  • Julian

    Very nice, thanks for sharing.

  • emilios

    thanks for sharing!

  • http://www.facebook.com/subi.subaanan Subi Rooban Segha

    This is more of an “advice” than a “tutorial”.
    It was really helpful.

  • Pia

    This is an excellent vid! I’m a newbie at design and I’ve a bit OC with how my text looks like. At least now I know better. Thanks!