Kerning, the Hard Way

Kerning, the Hard Way 2025-03-14 by David Jones Here is a font i am working on; i hope you like it. The letterforms are reversed out against a vertically striped background. In a manner similar to Schaeffer Versalien. The graphic effect is inspired-by/stolen-from Schaefer Versalien, but the letterforms are modified from my found stencil font Arugula. Bear in the mind that with a font like this, the parts that are drawn are the black parts. So, let's consider a word like SALTY: Looks okay? Perhaps you think is fine and there is nothing to comment on. What about the kerning, in this case between L and T? In the good old days of metal type the only kerns were when /f projected outside the edge of its body. This would not have been kerned and we were ok with that (larger wooden type may have been kerned with a saw or a file, but in this design, the cuts would have to be made to line up the stripes exactly; tricky business). Here’s what this particular example looks like without ke ... Read full article.