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How do I space letters correctly?
Posted by SebastianK in
20 Apr 2010 — 8:02pm
20 Apr 2010 — 8:02pm
Good evening,
I'm finally working on my first typeface! Yay. It's a conservative, old-style text serif and it will look like this. It'll be an open source project that I work on in my free time.
Since I have no typographic education whatsoever (I'm an engineering freshman straight out of highschool with a type addiction), I need some help: how do I space letters horizontally? I just finished the lowercase letters and I already spend most of my time changing side bearings and kernings instead of drawing letters. That is annoying and frustrating. It's a constant shifting of letters back and forth, and I never seem to get the spacing quite even.
So how do you do it right—and I mean right from the start? Is there a special order in which you start spacing? Are there percentage guidelines for average space between stems/bowls? Can you point me to software to help me do it (I'm running FontForge on Ubuntu)?
I appreciate your support!
Sebastian
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20 Apr 2010 — 8:41pm
1. Study.
2. Practice.
3. Start over at step 1.
It also helps—immensely—to space as you draw letters instead of after.
20 Apr 2010 — 9:09pm
Thanks! Any hints on where to start with point 1?
20 Apr 2010 — 9:44pm
http://briem.net/2/2.3.5a/2.3.5.01.spacing.htm
http://www.typeculture.com/academic_resource/articles_essays/pdfs/tc_art...
Don't start kerning anything until your spacing is solid.
20 Apr 2010 — 9:47pm
Read the relevant sections of the third, fourth, seventh, eighth, and tenth books on this list.
20 Apr 2010 — 10:16pm
That's extremely helpful; I'll look into these. Thank you so much!
20 Apr 2010 — 10:42pm
There's also this thread
http://www.typophile.com/node/15794
which I found linked from the helpful Typowiki.
21 Apr 2010 — 11:08am
Open up some fonts and study the sidebearings.
21 Apr 2010 — 7:35pm
You can start with:
HHOOHOH
nnoonon
Get that looking good and the rest is gravy.
22 Apr 2010 — 8:11am
I second James Puckett's Walter Tracy recommendation. I've found the system he outlines *very* helpful as a starting point.
22 Apr 2010 — 5:39pm
Also check out the iKern service. In my experience, it's very good.
22 Apr 2010 — 8:04pm
Thanks so much, you're an extremely helpful bunch … I'll hopefully move to the Critique forums soon!
24 Apr 2010 — 10:29pm
All the above. But I'll especially reiterate the advice to finish the spacing before you start kerning. And after you *think* you've finished, work with it for at least several weeks before you let yourself kern. Seriously, this is probably the advice that will save you the second greatest amount of grief ever in type design.
(The greatest amount of grief to be saved is by never even attempting type design in the first place. It is simply a craft that is full of frustrations. But of much job as well.)
Cheers,
T
24 Apr 2010 — 11:43pm
Spacing Method
10 Jun 2010 — 9:29am
Thank you. What you're saying is very true.
... before you start kerning.
Oh. You mean you've found kerning pairs in the samples online? Well, they count for nothing.
In my case (I think I can give this away safely), Google/Raph plan to send it to iKern soon, specifically so I can spend more time on letter drawing. That may or may not sound like a sacrilege to you, but frankly, I'm grateful for not having to do the spacing/kerning.
(I'll update this thread as soon as that is done, with better sample files, too. It's easier to critique letters in an even-looking context, I'd assume ...)
10 Jun 2010 — 9:47am
That may or may not sound like a sacrilege to you, but frankly, I'm grateful for not having to do the spacing/kerning.
Having someone else work on the kerning is one thing, but if you don’t get the basic spacing down first the kerning isn’t going to make the font any better. If your basic spacing doesn’t work, how are you even supposed to know that your letters have been drawn well and work together? Or is this one of those open-source things where if the users want it finished they have to do it themselves?
10 Jun 2010 — 11:51am
Chapter 3 Spacing letters & lines; Fontographer by Stephen Moye
12 Jun 2010 — 8:10pm
I accidentally bumped this old thread. Sorry. I do know how to space and kern, and at least the Roman Regular looks acceptable today (unkerned). The other five weights I'll take care of this week.
And for the record, iKern doesn't do kerning without spacing (how would an algorithm do that, anyway?). AFAIK it finds good letter-to-letter distances, sets the side bearings and then fills in kerning values for the combinations that don't fit.
Of course, it's hard to judge the quality of the letters in an unspaced font. Point taken.
Or is this one of those open-source things where if the users want it finished they have to do it themselves?
That hurt. I hope not.
Jan, thanks for that! I'll put in on my to-read list!