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Kerning is the process of adjusting the space between individual characters in a typeface to achieve a visually pleasing and balanced appearance. Unlike tracking, which adjusts the space for an entire block of text, kerning is a pair-specific adjustment, often applied to large-scale text like logos or headlines, to prevent awkward gaps or overlaps and improve legibility.

How it works

Character pairing: Kerning is performed on specific pairs of letters that have unusual spacing due to their shape, such as "AV," "WA," or "LT".

Manual adjustment: A designer or software user can manually increase or decrease the space between these pairs to make them look more uniform.

Types of kerning:

Metric kerning: Uses the built-in spacing information from the font's design.
Optical kerning: Analyzes letter shapes to adjust spacing, which is often better when mixing fonts.
Manual kerning: Allows for fine-tuning by the user, which can override the default settings.

Why it's important

Aesthetics: Proper kerning makes text look professional, polished, and harmonious.

Readability: It prevents letters from appearing too close or too far apart, which can cause reading errors or make text look unprofessional.

Consistency: It ensures that the negative space between characters is visually consistent, even though the actual space between different pairs may vary.