Kerning Lecture

Today I had a lecture on kerning. We watched a sort documentary called 'Gentlemen of letters' which was very interesting as it talked about traditional sign painting in ireland.' We talked about the common problems and I learned some terminology. Kerning means to add or remove space between pairs of glyphs.
Metric kerning uses kerning pairs which are included with most fonts, most fonts contains info about the spacing of specific pairs of letters. Optical kerning adjusts the spacing between adjacent characters based on their shapes. People have many opinions on kerning, Tschichold.J states 'Letter spacing should not be mechanically equal but must achieve equal optical space. The letters must be separated by even and adequate white areas.'

Our tutor came up with the game Kerndown to help us fully understand the importance of kerning. We got into small groups and picked 5 types of letters. My group was Thea and Hannah and we decided to choose two vowels and three consonants all upper case. we were given a A, E, W, D and S.
For our first task we needed to create a word with our letters and arrange them three different designs to represent different companies.

We decided that the letters could spell WADE and for our first design we put our letters equally apart and it made the name look formal and serious like a mens formalwear company. Next we put the letters a equal width apart and put the D on its side and had its side on the cap height line.  This made the D resemble a wine glass which made it look like the company name of a modern wine bar. Lastly we put the letters vertical with a large width apart and all of the sides lined up in a straight line which made some of the letters be tilted. We though this was a fun concept and looked like the name of a toy shop. This activity made me realise the importance of kerning when representing a company.

The next activity was a quick round were the tutor shouted out a type of company and we had to kern the words to best represent the company. We changed out word to Wead. I enjoyed this task as we had to think fast and came up with some good outcomes.

Pest Control
We spaced the letters equally apart but had the D on an angle as if it was a dead insect.

 Car Manufacturer
We decided to spread the letters apart like what car companies such as BMW do. This makes the letters look more formal and important as there is more emphasis on each one.

Student night club
We thought that the A on a slant would make the name look edgy however have class due to the gaps between the other letters.

Children's Animation Series
We moved the letters around as if they were letter magnets on a fridge and that made the name look like a child had done it. The kerning was slightly different between the words to give a messy feel and add to the fact of a child.

 Condom Company

We looked at negative space in the E and D so it made a smily face and tried to make the word look more abstract to resemble pleasurable emotions.

New Quentin Tarantino film

We wanted the name to look more serious but also different therefore we kerned the letters with very small spaces and did not just work in a horizontal line.