How To Kern Professionally. (Not many know this!) 🤯 

Hope you enjoyed the video and learned something new about kerning! If you have any questions be sure to leave them below and I'll do my best to answer them :)

Another trick you can use to help you while you kern is to rotate the word 180 degrees so that it’s upside down. This helps your brain to treat each character as an object, focus less on reading them, and increase your ability to identify spacing issues between them.

I clicked so fast when I saw the kerning master talking about kerning. LOVE IT.

Carrots are delicious when cooked in an instapot oh wait, this isn’t a cooking channel :) Still kerning is something my brain perceives but doesn’t really know about. Nice to learn that when I’m thinking “why do these letters seem a bit off” there is something real behind it. Happy algorithm accident, me finding this vid.

Had a hard time understanding why you'd fill a joke with water.

I’ve been focusing specifically on my type during my final semesters in school because I recognized it as a weak point. When you kerned Giga correctly it sent shivers down my spine.

I learned quite a bit about proper kerning having been a graphic designer and sign painter. Awesome stuff!

I think you should do a part 2 of this video. Really informative. Thanks for this Will

Carrots! Thank you for putting this out; I dabble in design and am 100% self-taught, you're content is the easiest to digest. Please, keep it coming!

Such a great video & it is great to hear your perspective. I find myself naturally going a bit wider with my kerning sometimes so I like to see your narrow balance. I also love carrots 🥕

Love this, been trying to find typography tutorials that go super detailed.

Oh man! As art director this is a great great video to share with the rest of my team who are not designers but use texts on videos every week. Thank man! please continue doing great content!

Thank you very much for making it so practical and simple.

I'm a front end dev who's been a dipping toe into the design world. Your videos have really given me a sense of how to approach a project, the common mistakes to avoid, and subtleties like this that can really make the difference in the way a project turns out. Cheers, man. 🥕 🥕

I've been learning so much recently from your videos and logo reviews. Thank you 😊.

Thank you for the video. Your knowledge of kerning is based on your intuition and a rool of thumb. There are at least two very useful practices I use all the time to kern words. The first one is the rule of the middle letter. All you have to do is to split your word into groups of three consecutive letters and then adjust the middle letter in each group.

Carrots! This makes a whole lot of sense and very easy to digest. Im a self taught designer so everything I know is through trial and errors and tons and tons of experience. Thanks a lot for this!

Generally, you kern adjacent curved forms closer to one another (example c and o together) and letterforms with vertical strokes like l, i, j, I, t, etc. further apart. Use the squint test and you can see where the problems lie a bit better.

Glad to see this, so many new graphic designers don't consider type at all. It's too easy to just type and leave it. Maybe some good old, hand drawn text should be brought back for training new designers, it didn't do me any harm about 24 years ago. 😱

Carrots. Love these tips. Great explanations of do's, don'ts and why! Learning lots.

Carrots. I totally love this refresher. One of the most overlooked skill in design :)

Carrot! That was most essential basic adjustment in type design and I'm bad at it. Thankyou so much for this. That was really helpful.

Never thought bad eyesight was actually helping my design until you asked me to look at Giga. Thanks Will🙏🏾

This was very helpful for understanding the goals and process of kerning type. I was surprised to see how intuitive/"gut feel"/subjective the process is, although I suppose that makes sense because you are measuring visual balance as perceived by a reader. I'm curious if you could train an AI to do this, even if it just gave you a "score" like the game or a second opinion. Thanks so much for sharing. I stumbled across your channel recently. I'm a software engineer by trade, but I also have a strong interest in visual design. It's been a great way to level up my game when building user interfaces. It's really cool to see your expertise at work.

Thx for the blur tip! I’m not bad at kerning, but that alone should help raise my game.

If you wanna check your kerning you can also turn your text block upside down, it becomes less about text and more about geometry and spaces between shapes

Great video. One of the things I always see in my own creative stuff but didn’t have the right plan to sort out! Thanks!

Hey Will, I just watched your video on kearning and I dig it! I've never heard of it before but I've been doing it for 40 years. I look forward to learning more and watching my artwork grow. Thank you for the knowledge and I tried the Kerntype game and got a 70, 81 and 100. It's interesting to me how this process gratifies me so much and some folks just think that I'm easily ammused

Carrots. I learned something today. I frequently hear or see designers talking about (criticising) kerning in other's work but never knew there were actual fundamentals to look for - I just thought it was down to opinion and personal preference.

This topic is really really need to talk about! Thanks mate

Carrots! Super useful, I absolutely wanted to lean more about kerning. Well-kerned logos and type looks totally different, it's the next level! Thanks Will :D

Great video, thanks for making this. One method I was taught back in the day to visually check if your kerning is off: is to look at the word upside down. It forces you to look at the negative space more abstractly. Also, I find certain capital letters at the endings of words (depending on the type style) could sometimes overhang slightly over the next lowercase letter: like T, Y, P and sometimes W.

Carrots. I always adjusted kerning like this instinctively. Also I've worked with an art director that kerned just like this. When your video title appeared to me I clicked thinking there was a proper method to calculate the spacing, but it turns out I was doing it the right way all along. Great video nonetheless, it's a considerable amount of work we do to make type just perfect that is mostly unappreciated.

Thank you so much for this video! Having some hands-on resources is going to help as I make my way through my typography class! 🥕🥕🥕

6:16 e goes one step right, then two steps left, then one step right - perfection!

Carrots. I am a type designer and it's very difficult at first to adjust the kerning issues. But as you go through the process, the end result is so satisfying.

So good!!!!! Thanks for sharing.

I was about to mention the kerning game, but you did so. As a freelance developer I have worked in dozens of agencies; so far no designer I've worked with has beaten my kerning game score. It is verifiably an underdeveloped skill among designers.

that keyboard on your desk............is so cuteeeee 😍

Carrots. I really enjoyed this lesson about kerning. You broke it down to simple steps. I hope you'll be able to dive deeper into some of these lessons some day. I wouldn't mind watching these lessons broken into parts either. Keep up the good work!

I don't know if commenting twice helps with the algorithm but I like how you're asking to comment exactly for that purpose and not faking to want to hear what we think

Carrots! Absolutely love your videos. It's all the stuff I wish they taught in design school.

Carrots :3 I can't wait to give that site a go. I've really wanted to improve on my kerning, because I've known its a thing but never really understood it. I started a job a few years ago, and didn't initially go in worrying about typesetting/topography, but over time, between complications with our specialized program (that i hope one day we will move away from honestly) and having to hand-draw in custom lettering (typically from old family headstones), I've really wanted to understand kerning. The person I work with has an eye for it because she's been doing it since before I was born, and even back when they had to use die cut letters by hand. She's great at pinpointing out stuff, but because she was never like specially trained/college trained, she doesn't know like terms and stuff and I'm just an inquisitive person that wants to dive into the "why" of things. I can be very technical and mathematical with spacing on letters but a current project had me rethinking because an A was between a T and i want to say W (but late night brain plus crap memory) when I took a second to step back, printed out what I had done and realized how off the spacing looked and realized my mistake. So, sent me down a rabbit hole. Off to learn more.

Thanks for the tips Will! Great explanation! I’ll have to try out the kerning game. Lol!

You are my hero! Thanks a HUGE CARROT for a “alt+arrow” shortcut!!!

Carrots. would love to see more videos on this from such an intelligent mind. would also love to no more about the 'glyphs' programme you was using in this video! and last but not least, thank you for you advice in helping me better my design skills!

carrots man... great content. I learned a few tricks. Seems I did kern relatively well by myself intuitively, But now I understand the why even better. thank you

Informative... This subject is underrated...

Carrots!! A neat trick taught to me by an art director I worked with is to turn the word upside down. There’s an interesting science to reading words in that we read the space around the letters and not the letters themselves. So turning the word upside down forces you to examine the space and not the letters. And this shouldn’t just be for logos but also larger headlines too, especially where they dominate an ad space. The growing world of reactive creative work for digital/social is killing this level of craft. Thanks for addressing it. Nice vid.

The Kern game gets a massive thumbs up from me,,always great to practice properly,,gotta keep your eye in the game... only point you should have made was what your kerning space increment was when shuffling letters around... ;p

Ohh Carrots. Watxhing this and knowing a bit about kerning but not actually realising I've been doing just that for a few years now, sort of organically. Thanks for making me actually think about it!

Carrots. Kerning do be a tricky aspect of Typography. Thank you for explaining it more well

Great videos, thanks for your sharing!

Thanks Will!

Thank you for the wonderful advice!!! 🥕 🥕 🥕

Carrots. Nice one, that's helpful stuff. Didn't know the ALT + arrows trick, that's nifty.

Very appealing thumbnail. Props to you!

i really enjoy having your videos on while im working thanks so much for the carrots as well

Again, Well done! I am teaching a typography course and I will direct my students to they channel.

Glad to found this holy grail video! Thanks

Thank you. Love your work! Keep it going.

Carrots! Great video and very informative! Will certainly be checking out that Kerning game to test myself regularly. Many thanks!

Thank you so much that was very helpful

Thank you! This helps.

Interesting seeing you doing this video. The other day I think I saw one of your logos with a kerning issue!

Carrots! Love it, thanks will!!! 🙏🏻

it’s good to revisit the basics from a different perspective. The blur technique is quite interesting and will use it time to time. Thanks bru.

Hi Will, thanks for another great video. I'm starting out on my Graphic Design study (at age 55! Too old?) and I find your videos very informative and easy to follow. Thanks again.

I honestly didn't know. Thanks Paterson

4 years already crossed to know this simple technique.

Alt-arrow - I’m stealing that! Another tip I picked up is to turn the word upside down. Also (if deadline allows) going back to it after a few hours break (or next day is even better). Sometimes seeing it with fresh eyes (so to speak) you spot things you didn’t notice before.🥕🥕🥕

Thanks for your perspective and for the game tip. A good challenge :)

Carrots! Very helpful. Thanks Will 👌

Thank you!

I love your vids they’re so helpful

Thanks mate for all this content, you teach wonderfully.Thanks brav!

Walling looks like Notion, which it's what i use. Good carrots colleague!!

🥕🥕🥕🥕 I never was too certain about kerning till now… best tutorial ever!

I am not typing "carrots." Dammit! You tricked me! I'm not a typographer, so I'm really happy that my typical method of "push letters around until they look better" is the correct one. 😂

You learn something new everyday. Great video! Carrots

Thankyou Will for this.. I really neeed it

Thank you

Carrots Great to learn something new - not a designer, but always good to add knowledge as you never know when you need it - cheers

Carrots does helps me alot, and now I'm editing my fonts kerning

carrots. thanks for this video. i'm an amateur but i love to dabble, i knew about kerning but this confirmed a lot of things i suspected to be true. great video!

Thank you for this. I learned something I didn't even knew I needed.

Thank you for the content!

Would love to see more kerning videos!

Love it. Once I leant this in design school, I get triggered every time I see badly kerned text. It makes such a huge difference. Once you see it - you can't unsee it.

Yes! Someone else who nerds out about fonts and design.

Thanks Will

Best carrots explanation video!

So Alt+arrows ooook! Tnks for the tips!

Carrots...love to watch these videos, even it's something I'm already practicing, because it reinforces good practices and reassures my confidence.

thanks, great stuff

Learned something, and the kerning game is fun to do.

Typeface designer here, Some of your forms look quite top heavy. Like the a, o, and d, and c, take a bit off the top of the curves to make them more subtly bottom-heavy, it is an optical adjustment but works wonders

Thanks a lot helpful tips!

Thanks, I learned something today :)

Carrots. Thanks Will, this was a great review for me and I am loving the kerning game!