10 Kerning and Tracking Tutorials

Back in 2003 I blogged "Do you kern your headlines?" lamenting the sad state of kerning I'd been seeing all around me:

"At least a handful of times this week I've run across a forum or a blog posting lamenting the lack of kerning in an otherwise good newsletter, book cover, or display ad. It's probably just coincidence that I encountered all these comments at once. Or is it? Perhaps there is an epidemic of unkerned type going around. Have people forgotten how to kern or do they just don't think it matters?"

For those who don't but want to know more about why they should and how to do it, here are ten tutorials on kerning and its cousin, tracking.

General Kerning and Tracking Lessons

• Kerning and Tracking explains the difference between the two. Page 2 offers a few creative kerning and tracking tips.

• How to Kern is a tutorial (PDF format) on perfecting your kerning skills and acheiving perfect letter spacing. It refers to the Adobe Creative Suite in some places but mostly focuses on the principles of kerning and tips and tricks for better letter spacing.

• letter-spacing Examples shows how the letter-spacing CSS property works to control spacing between characters on a Web page.

Software Specific Kerning and Tracking Tutorials

• InDesign: This is a Optical Kerning video tutorial. Deke McClelland shows how metrics and optical kerning methods work and how they differ.

• Photoshop: Kerning for the Spatially Challenged illustrates several instances where kerning improves a headline.

• Photoshop: This Text Kerning tutorial shows how to get some special effects using kerning.

• Illustrator: Basic Text Editing - Character Settings is a nice basic video tutorial covering several settings including kerning and tracking.

• Illustrator: Kerning in Motion Graphics is a video tutorial. It shows how tracking and kerning differs then focuses on kerning settings and what they all do in After Effects.

• Publisher: The Measurements toolbar is an overview of this toolbar where you can set tracking, kerning, and other text spacing specficiations.

So, do you kern your headlines?