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Letterspacing Gill Sans?
Just wondering: will I be eternally damned for letterspacing Gill Sans for the main text on a page? The default spacing just seems so uneven and tight to me, especially the way that the f's, r's and t's bump into their neighbors.
Any thoughts?
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2 Aug 2006 — 11:15am
The greater the spacing the hotter the flames...
2 Aug 2006 — 12:05pm
OK, now for a serious answer/opinion. It sounds like you're spacing it out a bit just to help legibility. I don't see why this would be a problem. Is this being used as body copy?
2 Aug 2006 — 12:54pm
That is a reason for better kern pairs, not letter-spacing (which just moves not only the problem characters but all of them apart).
It sounds as if it would make more sense to edit the kern pairs or choose a different face or font.
--Kathleen
2 Aug 2006 — 1:50pm
Yes, but not tons of it, only a few paragraphs long. It's not as though I'm setting a whole book in Gill Sans with letterspacing.
Perhaps using InDesign's optical kerning would be better.
2 Aug 2006 — 1:57pm
If it's only a few paragraphs I'd just manually kern it rather than dealing with kerning tables, altho those are quite useful and you might want to do it that way in order to have them for later uses.
2 Aug 2006 — 3:10pm
Perhaps using InDesign’s optical kerning would be better.
I second that, unless you've got some big bold letters to do. Then you're gonna just have to kern the bastards. Gill Sans, at least every copy I've ever used has really bad letterspacing. But alas, it is a humanist face...hard to set perfect metrics for it.
2 Aug 2006 — 8:21pm
I've been a fan of InDesign's optical kerning since inception. Eric Gill didn't design it to be a giant headline face, and the electronic version doesn't want to do it either. Please don't make a face do something it wasn't designed to do....
3 Aug 2006 — 6:41am
Monotype's original digital version has TERRIBLE kerning/spacing.
Just look at some letterprinted samples from the Fifties (we're talking lead here!) and you'll instantly notice that's a lot better. Gill Sans (digital) really needs a lot of letterspacing (the Light, Regular, Book and their Italics surely) to get that suave look it had in the old days…
3 Aug 2006 — 8:05am
Walter Tracy writes that Gill sans was originally widely spaced--too widely in his view. It looks like from this discussion the original spacing had some merit in it. The attempts to get a good tighter spacing seem to have been not so good, according to those here who have used it.
So your instincts to track it wider has some historical justification.
3 Aug 2006 — 10:26am
Linda: I'm definitely not using it as a giant headline face. I'm setting it at 10pts and 8pts. My eyes just snag on the awkward kerning pairs.
Bert and Will: Glad to know I'm not the only one who thinks the letters need a little more room to breathe.
10 Apr 2007 — 11:29am
Reviving this old thread... and transmogrifying it into my own question:
Does Gill Sans also typically have tight-to-none spacing after a period? I recently saw a document produced entirely in Gill Sans and after every period, especially those followed by an A, I wanted to insert a space. It seemed elsewehere the word spacing was more or less normal. All text was ragged right.
I'm curious if this is a quirk with Gill Sans? I don't have the digital document to examine, and I will not get any formatting info from the person who created the document, so there's no way for me to know if it's been tracked or if the spaces have simply been left out.
I was hoping perhaps someone here might know if this is a usual and known oddness with the typeface.
Kristina
10 Apr 2007 — 11:51am
The spacing is very/too tight after a full stop/period whether it is a quirk or just bloody annoying I’ll leave you to answer. I can see some of the sense behind it but the idea doesn’t work for me.
Tim
10 Apr 2007 — 12:01pm
Thanks, Tim, for the quick answer.
This cements my vote for not using GS in extended text.
K.
10 Apr 2007 — 12:04pm
Just saw this thread...
Alex, just sub a dog for the sheep and you'll be... on track.
hhp
10 Apr 2007 — 11:58pm
>using GS in extended text
It works better in justified text, with a loose preferences setting. I haven’t had the opportunity to use Gill Pro, that might be different.
Tim
11 Apr 2007 — 12:56am
That reminds me: can anyone explain to me WHY the dot and the comma vary from round to square-based between regular and italic? It drives me crazy…