Kerning, or adjusting the amount of space between two letters is essential to correctly presenting display type for production. The usual goal is to correct uneven spacing between certain pairs to reach overall evenness between all letters. This does not necessarily mean making all the spaces close together or far apart. The key is optical evenness.

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What’s wrong with this picture? There are several areas to correct.

A Beginners Guide to Kerning like a Designer

Try this kerning game as an introduction or practice only.

You should always kern Display Type (headings, subheads, titles, logotypes). You typically would not kern Text Type (body copy). Exceptions within Text Type where you should kern might include the following examples;

1. adjusting the space around punctuation such as the EM dash (close but not touching)
2. position of the letter following an initial cap letter at the beginning of a story
3. space around figures (numbers) and fractions.

The easiest way to adjust this horizontal space is to use keyboard commands by doing the following:

1. select the type tool from the tool window
2. click between the two letters you wish to adjust
3. hold down the option key (Mac) or alt (PC)
4. use the right and left arrows on your keyboard to push letters farther away or closer together.

You can adjust how much distance is assigned to the arrow increments by going to;

Menu Bar >> Illustrator >> Preferences >> General >> Keyboard increment

Download this compressed file kern this to your computer

1. Open in Illustrator You will be adjusting the letter spacing, otherwise known as kerning, of the three lines at the top of the page.
2. Set the first line in Garamond or other serif typeface
3. Set line two in a novelty typeface
4. Set the third line in Helvetica or other sans-serif typeface
5. Make your spacing adjustments using the keyboard commands listed above