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Spoting Kerning Examples

Lesson 10 from: Advanced Typography: Fine Tuning and Finessing

Ilene Strizver

Spoting Kerning Examples

Lesson 10 from: Advanced Typography: Fine Tuning and Finessing

Ilene Strizver

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Lesson Info

10. Spoting Kerning Examples

Lesson Info

Spoting Kerning Examples

I really want you to notice, Like, the worst cases. So what we're gonna do now is yes. It's your turn. Um, and the home audience also, I'm going to give you a little time to examine each of these pieces and see what you think before we start talking about them. OK, I'm going to start with something that's pretty horrible. It's laughable. Well, I mean, I shouldn't say that, not the book, but, I mean, we're talking about spacing. Okay? Some of these things might have been done on word they might have been done by I don't really know how some of these air done, but we're going to start with the most say, the most extreme examples of what I consider poor spacing. And then we're just gonna move up and you know, you're going to talk and I'm gonna talk, and you're going to see things, and it's gonna be great. Okay, so let's look at the word in what's wrong with the word in spacing? And it looks like the ends aren't even even I n enter close and are the ends. While they shouldn't be touching b...

ecause I said straight characters with, um Sarah should not touch, so those shouldn't touch it all. Okay, that's number one. Number two in spoke. Oh, I mean, in spots. Yeah, that's why I say this one is so obvious. You know, the S and P the p in the over a little tight, but it's really hard to even tell because Theo, when the tea is so unbelievably open in the ts is way too open. So a and I don't know how that happened. I can tell, you know, fun really looks like that. So I mean, some of these things andan these A lot of these are old images. Some of them are new, and it's really it's really hard to know what what happened with that. But clearly, if you were confused about what's wrong if you did the three letter rule you if you looked at the p o. T. You clearly see that that's to open. But I think that one's very easy to notice. Okay, so let's go down to the bottom. Let's look at the words special. Okay. Any idea what might be wrong with the word special? S p e seemed really quoth. Yes, s p e c or too tight. They are too tight. What about the I A. L competitive? The specificity I e in the A like the exactly They're inconsistent. Either one is acceptable because I said it's OK to overlap a diagonal, but it's not required. It's a question of taste, but it's a question of consistency. So are the I a Don't touch in the A l do touch. Okay, so that's that's that's poor turning. Okay, um, the word place. I'm gonna talk about that because I know if I I know what you're gonna say. If I ask you what's a bad combination and you're probably gonna first thing you're probably going to say is the l in the A. OK, because most people dio basically the A C is too tight. Pl isn't bad. Es isn't bad. But L A is a very common combination with old caps, and it creates a very big space. The problem is, somebody might say, Well, they're touching. That's nothing wrong with them touching because you have a diagonal. But I'm going to suggest something that I would do that I would dio to the Elena and you might, and once you feel confident you might attempt it. And that is to try to make a ligature combination out of the L in the A by sliding the A to the left so that the bottom serif the of the L touches the diagonal of the A. Okay. And if you're going to try that, what you then want to do is converted to outline and clean up any lumps or bumps so that you're actually creating a ligature. That looks nice. OK, Is your client going to go for it? I don't know. Should you ask them beforehand? Probably not. What I suggest you do is ask forgiveness, not permission. Okay, It's a visual thing. This is just how you should approach some of these things with a client or with the boss. Show them your custom ligature version. See if they even notice they might say, Looks great. You might get away with it. And I must say and get away with it. I think it might be a really good solution. Okay, if not, have another version with them not overlapping and not touching. And then you can show them both and then you can explain Well, the reason I did. I did this. This is type tailoring. It's an accepted practice of of current in certain combinations that, you know, blah, blah, willful. If you got to give him the little bit of the back story, make it sound like you're confident you have to show that you're confident you know what you're doing instead of saying I don't know what do you know what I'm saying? You have to. But this might not be something you're going to do next week. This might be something you do. Depending upon your level of experience. It might be something you do after. You really start to see things and and feel more comfortable doing that. Uh huh. Okay, so of that word just keeps popping up. Um, let's just look at the word style again, because the other is very subtle. Um, so give me a in the words style. Give me a bad three letter combination. Meaning three letters with two spaces that are uneven, very uneven. Could be t y el Could be S t. Why could be why, Ellie. So there's no wrong answer. Okay? To me, the one that sticks out the most is that s t Why? Because again. And I see the bottom. I see a very small space here and I see a very big space here. OK, so what would I do? I can't obviously show you how to fix these. But what What do you think should be done? Maybe to fix this, expand the space between the s and the tea and then overlap the tea and the why exactly this tea and why it begs to be overlapped Because it just so happens that the cross bar of the tea and the sir from the y look like they line up in there the same shape. That's not true in every typeface. But when you have an extreme six and typeface like this, I mean it's begging to be overlapped. Okay, so, yes, I would open the S T close up and overlapped the T y. Ah. I'd also opened the l e. Okay, so you can see that, right? Okay, there's one. Really? Give me the worst three. I'm talking about the red type, OK? Yes. You're starting to get it already. OK, Looks like it's up. Looks like it's raised too high. It's way too skinny. I talk about the type face. I'm not even sure why that talk about what makes a good type is consistency. Okay, so that w is is so narrow. I don't know why it is like that, but even if that was intentional, that space between the W. A. Is the worst thing happening in the spacing off of this of this type. Okay, so, you know, you might chuckle because it's so obvious. But I can tell you how happy I am that you picked this out so fast because it means you're already starting on the way to noticing these kinds of things. Okay, so and I imagine this was not intended to look perfect and pristine, but clearly that spacing it almost becomes, you know, it's annoying. It's stuff stops you stop your eye. You just look at that. W A. As you're noticing lots of book covers, I have a lot of book covers and not all, but it's just easier to find these things. Ah, lot of them do. You use all caps and there are a lot of problems with all caps, but let's see, take up some of these. I haven't taken a strong look at because their new. So sometimes I'm looking like you. So let's see. Let's look at this. It took a toll. Let's look it Well, Okay. What do you think of the word fall? A really close. Yes, the f and they seem a little close. I agree with that because I'm looking at the f A. L and I'm also looking at the f A l l Well, what do you think about the A l and the L L. We're a little bit to open. Yes, they are a little bit to open the A l might be. You could leave that if you didn't like overlapping characters, you could leave the A and the L as it is. I like to have them overlap ever so slightly. But either way, even if you capped it, I would then make the two l's closer to try to reduce this negative space or take away some of that sand from the hourglass. And I would open this slightly and this is getting more subtle. So if you see this, I applaud you. Really? This one is not as obvious as the others. Um, the word. Sure. What about the word chores in the U and the R has been consistent. They are inconsistent. The h o it looks even to May Tho is tighter than the O in the Are you OK? So you're doing great with that? They also tend to look tighter than the rest. The ch looks OK. Thes Even if this were made to look like this, this looks tight because this is these two were fairly open. So could you connect the are in the e. Yes, you could. The leg of the art is somewhat of a diagonal and you could, as we say, have those two characters kiss, which means just touch a little bit. Okay, Um and And once I did that, I would make the in the s a little tighter. But based on what I did with the E in the S, I would then open up the h o. R. So that it visually matched the rest. Okay, I wouldn't start with the tightest characters because then you can't make all the other characters that tight. So a lot of it is looking back and forth. It's not like you go. One letter to the other. You're looking back and forth your current ing back and forth when you're actually doing it on the screen, you're making adjustments than you. Looking ahead, you're fixing that. Then you're going back here and you're saying, Oh, I did too much. I got open and a little more so it's really a give, give and take, and I highly recommend learning the I don't have a demo for this, but you could easily go home and play with it. And I strongly recommend that you learn the keyboard commands for current ing, adding and reducing. And again, it's probably command option graded and less than or something like that. Unless I'm in front of a keyboard. I don't know exactly what it is, but I never use the of the panel I always use or the tab. I always use the keyboard command, and there's also adoption command shift. If you wanted to do in smaller increments, so it makes sense for you for everyone to sort of research the key, the current in commands, all of them, and also you might be able to change in preferences. How many units removed when use those commands and make them smaller okay? I don't want to spend forever on this one. Uhm, can't you know an is? This really should look like what? What should the A in the end resemble in the rest of this title in the spacing and three and the Allen the top. And then if you look below it, there's an A and I And actually, if you look at the word wait, I should have given that one to you because that's another problem of a w a. You see how often people try to jam in diagonals to the you know, W's a days, um, and that three letter rule w A I is a natural obvious right now that I'm giving you telling you had a look at this stuff. Okay, so what starts off looking like a nice piece all of a sudden? It's like, Wow, spacing, Lee. It can really could be improved. Right? Okay, So here's here's ah book cover. There's actually a few of the things that you might find find odd from a design point of view. If you notice them and you want to talk about that, you can. It doesn't only have to be current ing But, um is there anything right away that stands out that you go? Uh, and the dash? Okay. The and ash, it seems unnecessary, doesn't it? I think it is. Especially since they're giving a natural break in the title with collar with eat well, being a different color. And, you know, I want to say, unfortunately, it's it's reduced where I almost feel like everything else should be the same size. Why does that happen sometimes? And this is about taking typographic license and again asking forgiveness, not permission. Ah, lot of times when designers get copy to design a cover or anything else, they're getting a title as a sentence. So they might be getting a title as a sentence with punctuation. Okay, but sometimes when you design the way you designed something might render a punctuation unnecessary. So in this case, because we have a line break and a color break doesn't really need that m dish, in my opinion. Okay. But let's look at the spacing. Give me take a look and give me a bed. Um, two or three letter combination. OK. Three letters that are really uneven in negative space. R I G is the one that sticks out the most. Exactly. Okay, What's the other one? Something we already talked about. T looks way looks way. Okay, so to me, that w a once again is too tight. Okay. Ah, let's see what else is going on. So this this is touching. That's that's acceptable. This is another instance where I might try to make a ligature out of that. Unfortunately, we don't want to read as fat. Fat. Right? Okay, Fat right. Eat. Well, okay. So you do have to be careful. I mean, you sometimes you have to try it and see and figure it out that way, but it's normally it's okay for things to touch ever so slightly when there's a diagonal. This this isn't terrible. That this these air fairly consistent. Um, so it is mostly it's it's right here. It's the round to the straight. There are no other round to straits in this setting. But I did say that around two a straight A restraint to round should only be slightly tighter than straight to a straight. So the straight to straits are like an H in any okay? And even you might even want to open that a little because everything else is so open here. So you want it all to look good as a unit? Somebody read that Thoi factor, okay? No, it's the oil factor. But be careful substituting letters with images and you know it doesn't read Well, um, let me just talk about the word factor. That's a tough one, because, you know, gas, the A and the C are too tight on, and some people might object to the C T in the t o. This is a difficult one because this is a typeface. It's kind of it's probably based on. This is not unacceptable to me, but I really think that this needs to be opened a lot in this needs to be open some, and this probably does to the challenge with something like this with the typeface like this is, this is a typeface based on it's kind of like a tray gin based on the lettering on the Trajan column and what you'll see a lot of movie titles and book titles that use something like that. It's not, might not be trading. It's something that has those kind of, um, characteristics and a lot of those type faces were Agent were originally meant to be on government buildings and libraries, and you'll still see them there in size lettering that you see space very, very open. Everything is very open, which is why you'll see wide seas and ours with a really wide legs. So when you have a typeface like that, it really calls for being all set very open. The problem is that what happens with things like book covers and such is that authors and editors and publishers want to take advantage of the real estate. So they want to set things is biggest possible. So a lot of times they tell designers to make it tighter, make it wider in larger do what you have to take up more real state. And so people notice in, and sometimes what happens is the spacing becomes compromised. Now, let's look for a moment. Let's go to something other than current ing. Let's look at the red type below that. Okay? It does something we talked about this afternoon. Okay, You know what? I have so many of these. I'm gonna I'm gonna do you your job. You're a little bit just to make it easier and to keep things moving along. Um okay, well, let me put it this way. Wow. There's one line of all caps. So what is that? Yeah, the spacing. Of course. The spacing here is tighter than it is here in here, because you've got all the caps. Okay, I don't It also looks to me like his letter spaced out a little bit too much. It looks a little too open. Um, OK, but let's move on. OK, so this is a nice cover, but there are some problems with Spacey point out to me. Then there's several of these. Either a bad two letter combination or a bad three letter combination. Meaning to letters. Something is too tight or too open. And three letters. They're uneven. D a Absolutely. That's number one. Okay. G r E is also bad, but O f is too tight. Okay, um, what was that in a n. What? You missed one or I see okay. Between the and the UN and the UN in the d is I will. I would overlap this like, OK, but some people wouldn't, and they might leave it, but I personally, that's that's my style. But if you do it here, you have to do it here and you have to do it here, OK? The things that really pop out to me are the DND especially next to the E and the A the O in the f Technically, these should be the same. Okay. And the eye in the sea And they all very rural, very similar. But there will really too tight I would probably overlap. They are in the eye. So probably the worst three letter combination is a D A and the r I C to may. The others could use a little tweaking, but they're not as bad as those nice. Nice cover. What? I see one thing and you might be like I dont know. Can you fix that? Well, the two teas. Okay, so, um, I would I don't know if they opened up the other letter spacing or or or I'm sorry if they tightened everything or what, but I would certainly make those two teams because it almost looks like get fishing or Tous Berg or something. You know, it really breaks it up. So even though that's a kala graphic typeface I would find a way to overlap them. And if I something look kind of funky, I would just turn it into outline and fix it. And you're allowed to do that. Okay, It's all set very open. But is there anything that you would change any one or two characters that look more uneven than the rest? The C t on the T o r to open. Exactly. C t t over to our open. Very good. I have a number of images with two characters that appear together a lot that create problems. So what do you see? Is the issue in this one. Okay, be a It's really the to tease. The B a is a little tight, but the two teas air the biggest problem. What did you say? Oh, you will get the word Great. Yeah, that's a tough one. You know, because, um, you can't really make it that much tighter unless you make it a ligature. And then maybe you'd open the g r E in order to balance that. But the most noticeable thing are the two teas. So what? You know, I mean, what? So what can you dio? Here's another instance, with two teas. Okay, I would try to make a ligature out of them. And again, it might not work. I don't know if I have that somewhere. Okay. See, I like that treatment, and that's a really wide typeface. So it's You know what? I would do more because I feel like there's still too much space here. And, you know, some of these other instances are a little a little tight, but you see that they're doing it. Um, see, what else is going on here, So and this is a very white typeface, but I would definitely tighten those even Mawr. And so that becomes a double T ligature. Okay, so some of these are a little more challenging. In other words, the spacing is a little better. So, um, let's just look at the black type. What do you think? Is there anything you would change? Excuse me? A x a x ray. The X is actually the worst one. It looks a little bit to open. Perhaps the whole word taxi might be tightened, but it looks like to me, like the A X needs more tightening than the rest. Okay, because so what you're looking is you're looking at the word below it and looking at the word above it, which are fairly evenly spaced. Um, it's just that word, which is the same size. Is that where Terry could use tightening and especially the a X. So I think you guys are doing great. I don't know. I hope you guys at home or on the same page with what we're doing here again. Thes. They're getting harder to spot because they're getting better. But what do you see? I think the I t. Is a little bit too tight in critters because there's so much space to the other side. Between the are in the between, the are in the eye, and between the two teas, it's mostly the two teas, that of the biggest problem. Okay, I do think the I and the team might might. You might be able to be open to open that, but what you also have to look at his lookout title of this is set OK, and that doesn't really look bad. It's a question of finding a balance. This doesn't look bad, but I would probably tighten all of these a little bit and possibly open these as well. So thes air in exactly the same characters. But look at the A and they are so the East, somewhat of around with it with an opening. OK, e and R look at the O in the a m. It's very close. And yet, I mean, it's close in in shape, but it's also too close, too tight. So that's why I say sometimes you have to go back and forth and you're in working on the current ing so you might tighten the type one will top one a little. You might open the bottom. You might go back and forth to try to get the whole thing to work is a hole. Okay, um, two things stand out to me here the most. What do you see? T w, right? Tito you I I wouldn't slide the w into the closer to the T. And I think the any is too tight. Okay. Not terrible. There's that word again. What? Iwas? Yeah, exactly. The t y. And once again what? You know what I would say? I would I would bring the white closer to the T so that it connects it would make it into a ligature. Okay? And it might be people going Oh, my God. You can't do that. What? You can you don't have to. It's a question of personal taste. Okay, but historically, this these air, this is the kind of tight tailoring we would dio to make spacing look more even. Okay, let's just look at the headline. Three letter rule or a w. Is it perfect or is it needs a little work? That and the WR to either the a in the w to close or they are in the air to open what might be a little of both. Okay. Okay. Again getting tougher. Tell me what you see. What do you see? Ellie is el es. Well, what about P l e Oh, yeah. Appeal. Sorry. I was just looking at how close that s were compared to the P and, well, they are tight, but they are. I agree with you, but the PL is round two straight. L e is straight to round, and they're different. Okay, They're slightly different. So you'd want to open that up? I mean, mostly it looks really nice. Said, probably tighten this a little bit. I had opened this. I tighten this. I mean, once you start looking, it's like then you can't stop seeing all these things. It's crazy. Can you see that? Too tight to open. This isn't bad. Yes, Too tight. Um, See, this should be consistent with this and this. And now they all look different to me very slightly. So those those old need to be consistent. Um, let's just look at the headline. Okay? Okay. Exactly. Oh, in the J is the worst of it. The rest isn't bad. Okay, this is a trick question. Enjoy. Yes. Okay. Did you all see it? Did you start? Your much caught it so quickly? It's the word spacing because the letter spacing what's good? I don't know that it matches the other pages from the same magazine. Look at this big words space. That's because you have an overhanging aft and extending J. But it creates so much negative space that it doesn't match the house of so Absolutely Didn't want to move that over a little bit. Okay? These air getting tough now it's hard to see that I seem so squished. Well, you know what? It's just that I mean, the I in the F If you you have to say it in relation to two letters, it might be but a lot of these air to open. And if you tighten up some of these others, the the I in the f might be okay. I think a lot of other things were probably to open and those might be OK as they are. Okay, what do we see here? Not bad. It's really It's really nice. Um, overall. And they're not touching diagonals here, but it's still OK, because they're doing a nice open setting. Overall, Um, the I would close the NT slightly that that's what's popping out to me. Oh, here we go with the teas again. Okay, so once again, you see that the two teas air to open and this one might benefit again from those teas. Overlapping rest isn't is it looks pretty, pretty even fairly good. The B a t. I mean, if you want to be picky, I would open the being the A slightly because I c b a t. I see not even negative space, and I'm also looking at the word above. But it's mostly those two teas. Here's an improved version. I was in a particular ill. That's not that I'm into, uh, uh, war in history. Really close? Yes. Okay. Thank you. The only noor way too close. All right. So Ah, the teas, I would probably make closer, and it definitely would open the oh, in the end. And then the word fighting. There was some inequalities, but I owe it almost doesn't bother me because I don't see this is intended to be a very slick, perfectly current peace. But I do see those things in Patton. Okay, this is something a little bit different. I don't want you necessarily to give me two characters. I want you to tell me if you see an inconsistency in the overall lettering of the type, and I don't expect you to see it quickly. Look at it. Yeah, letter. Okay. It's that they're not They're all the right thickness, but they look heavy because of what I'm wanting you to know. Turning are the, uh what's tracking? Well, space. Just say Say, say, because that could be koerting or tracking. What about it? Some words are closer together and some Well, okay, You're exactly right. Can you identify which kinds of letters in which words are the ones that are too tight? Diagonals, air tight and round their wide? Basically, it's the straits that are too tight. OK, But you I mean you you ever really get out. You see it? So if you look look punched U N is really tight in drunk. U N K is really tight. The diagonals on the rounds tend to be more open. Look, it leaves that's open, You addled a little dizzy. OK? And nd is too tight. M is too tight. Look, I n g is too tight, U N P is too tight. So for some reason, I don't know if they had current in turned off or what. For some reason, this is like an accordion in the space, and it goes from too tight to to open to to lie to, you know, maybe not to maybe some of something is right. But that's not matching, in effect, meant to be emotional. People often say that it could be, but I don't believe in sort of this whole drunk thing. People saying Maybe it's maybe it's supposed to do that. I don't personally by it because I don't find it's exaggerated enough to be to have intended to look like it was sort of Ah, drunk. Kind of a drunken type. OK, that's my opinion. But you're not the first person to say that. Okay, um, lovely cover. Except for what? Lovely treatment. There's one thing wrong that appears in two places. The apostrophe is the apostrophe. Wow. And not only is it too far from both characters, but I would lower it and you see it again here. Okay, so in a typeface like this, I probably would space the s the same distance to the easel. The other characters and I would just manually position that apostrophe. OK, but other than that, I'm It's very charming. It's appropriate. Typeface looks nice. Okay, Somebody read this quickly. Nobody. Hey. Okay. Somebody read it differently. Nobody through left. Okay, this is how sometimes it reads nobody to left. Hate. Okay, this is a typeface. It's a typeface. Because if you look at the repeated characters, all the O's air the same. Um, and there's nothing wrong with doing sort of a natural grunge or handwriting face. This one doesn't work. It has bad spacing, a really bad spacing. And it's also positioned incorrectly on the page. Where is something like this is absolutely charming. This is another typeface. Okay, so this is meant to look like, you know, hand writing. It is a font e. I just adore it. It's done. Well, The spacing is even the consistency is even. So you want to avoid something? Perhaps it might not be what? You know, the best solution for that kind of a treatment. Where is you can do something like this, and it works great. Um, be careful with, like, we talked a little bit earlier about type on a curve, really hard to put four letters on a curve. OK, so but you can see the problems here. Ah, what I was talking about earlier, The inconsistent spacing b e isn't so bad. E s is to open and s t his way to open. So that's a tough one. Okay, here's a blow up from a ah ah book. And this is a, um ah, connecting script on an angle. Okay, let me tell you about connecting script connecting scripts of some of the most difficult typefaces to design because they have to be designed. So the connection works perfectly with every other character. Okay, what happens if you take a connecting script and you put it on a curve? Even on a very slight curve, it creates bumps. Openings? I mean, you know, disconnects. And then let's just, you know, put a foil and bossing on it and what's that's going to do? And that's basically putting a magnifying glass to the problems. So if you're going to put a beautiful script like this on any kind of a curve, you have to either tighten the tracking slightly or individually currently, characters so that they reconnect like they're supposed to when they're on a straight a straight away. Okay, um, here we've got give me some bad. I'm gonna probably go through some of these. But you see any bad? It looks good when you first start, and then you see some bad combinations. So does anyone see some bad combinations? E. Yes, Ellie. Okay. And this is indicative of a lot of things that are going on here because these air here, this is fine. I l l l they have serifis. They don't touch. So this is a guideline If I said that to straits, have one distance between them and a straight to around should be. Remember I said slightly closer. This is drastically closer. The same thing is happening here. You have inequality between J new, which is a straight, and you and I and oh, when they are so as you look at the this isn't bad. The h r. I am. The MP is a little bit tight and the morning this is a little bit open and this is to open. So what looks initially like a nice setting, You know, if you start to take it apart, you see that it has a lot of problems. And I can tell you I know this typeface because it was one of the typefaces that was developed when I was at I t. C. I didn't personally work on it, but it's called eitc esprit. And if you do nothing to it, it looks fine. OK, so this this is somebody's attempt to make something. Look what they thought would look better. Okay, So this is why I say do this very conservatively. And when in doubt, don't do anything until you feel confident that you really want to make a change. Okay, so this isn't bad. I probably would try to see What if I could make a ligature, Perhaps out of the are in the A. Because that's the biggest space that I see there. Okay, this one is is isn't bad. It just seems to fall apart at the end of the word whale because it looks really nice and even accept the alien. The E s start to get to open. You see that? Also really, really nice tight treatment. Except the to me, the r aro look a little bit to open, okay. In this room for them to either be made tighter, perhaps chop a little bit off the are, perhaps do some or all of those things and perhaps open up some of the character. Other characters. What I just did notice that hadn't noticed before is it looks to me like this is tighter than this. And these a roll straight to straight characters. So I would try to even that out and open those up a bit. Oh, I need to do that now. Will tell you that's a good stretch anyway. Lovely logo but again, the attempt to tighten character combinations that probably shouldn't be tightened. This is fine. This is okay. I might make that a slightly tighter, but here you have an a n N l that can't be made any tighter. Okay? Because they had their almost touching on the bottom. So this distance should be applied to this and to this. Okay, so that's consistency. Uh huh. Really nice. Except for it. I see one combination or to combinations. PICO yellow. Ok, I'm glad you're doing it because I'm trying to move quickly here. Okay, So the pl too tight. This is too tight again when you have to straits and then you have a straightened around around in a straight, It should only be slightly tighter. Okay, this one isn't bad, but they made these other ones too tight. That one's OK. That wants to tight thes should be direct. This isn't even equal to that one. So? So the idea of consistency. Ah, lot of people are not really cognizant of that aspect of doing custom current ing, and they just do it and they go along and they don't think about making certain related letter forms consistent. Okay. Great page from a magazine. Let's just look at Jude Law, so to speak. Not literally. Okay, So what do you think? What about the l A. Very open the L A is to open and probably the A W is to open. What do you think about the U d E? I think it makes the J look weird. They're not Well, they're not consistent. They're not because the U This is you d is straight to round d e a straight to round. Look how different the spacing is. Okay, beautiful page. Lovely typeface. Very elegant treatment. It just needs a little bit of a current. An adjustment, in my view, to make it better. Really balanced. Okay. Really nice cover. Except for what? Two things. Word. You know what? Yes. Okay. Words. Spacing too much compared to these. These air. Okay. Too much words. Spacing. And what other character pair would you think it needs? Adjustment. The word I say the word to Yes, the t and the how the O's or the own the tea. Yeah. So and again. It's lovely, Except this needs to be tightened. And this and then this needs to be tightened. Okay, this is another one that looks great. Except what happened at the last couple of letter. I don't know why the S looks so short, but that's probably intentional, but this has a really nice rhythm to it, except all of a sudden you get T. E s. And this is to open. This is a little more open, and this is really open. So I don't know. I don't know if they think that's intentional, but the first part of the word looks great. And then it I feel like it. And it could be intentional, but for the purpose of teaching current ng, you know, I think it's a good example also really nice. Except I think the last two letters or to open it's odd, right? This is great looking just a fair game. This is really, really well done because they're taking a typeface that's intended to be set very open, and they're not trying to squeeze anything and make it really tight. The word spacing works here. Okay, this is another one that I think is really good. Perfectly space for all caps and not trying to squeeze enforce anything that shouldn't be, um, and I also let's see, I love the way they are in the air touching okay like that. It's a natural in this typeface because these are has a very thin stroke, a diagonal ending that leads into that. But that was done by the designer. Okay, The word conscience is also well spaced, um, of great great classic book, which it could be perfect as it is. But for me, I would make one change. Anyone see it are a and just look at the title in the all caps. I would I would close up the and the amy and okay, it's okay as it is, but it's to me. It looks a little open compared to the rest. Okay. Ah. Which I think there's there's two more here. I used to say this is this is perfect, except for one thing, cause I love the spacing. And the one thing is this. If you're going toe overlap to Serifis and they sort of go like this, you want to clean up the bump that appears. Which means you converted to outline and just move some points around and just make it look smooth, okay? And then finally, I saw this recently. I think it's I think it's Ah. Well, no, I just noticed something. Okay, I think the spacing is great. I think the spacing is beautiful. It's lovely. I mean, you could say I might tighten that, but I think it has really nice color. But what I just noticed now has to do with the line spacing. I feel that since this is one unit and this is one unit, I feel that there's more space here than here visually. Okay? And that probably has to do with this. So I would probably have tightened these slightly and added a little more space there. But basically on that on that note, Um, do you feel like you're starting to get the idea of it? Okay, um, you know, hopefully this has helped you to to see relationships between characters and, um eso when you leave here again, you really need to observe type everywhere you go to continue to train your eye, remember, be the master of your own typographic domain. Control your type and don't let it control you.

Class Materials

bonus material with purchase

Creating Type Solutions.mp4
Ilene Strizver - Typographic Checklist.pdf
Ilene Strizver - Type Rules - Chapter 2 and Glossary.pdf

bonus material with Purchase

Ilene Strizver - Chester - What Makes a Good TypeFace.pdf
Ilene Strizver - Oldrichium - What Makes a Good TypeFace.pdf.pdf
Ilene Strizver - Typequiz.pdf
Ilene Strizver - Typography - Fine Tuning and Finessing Syllabus.pdf

Ratings and Reviews

a Creativelive Student
 

Ilene's courses on Typography are jam-packed with excellent information that will elevate the quality of your work in print. She knows what';s current, but also what's important in long-time standards, and why. Just an incredible amount of information! you will enjoy watching, but you will want to purchase because of the sheer amount of useful content.

Nelson Mueller
 

Wonderful course! I enjoyed it from the beginning until the end, just like the fundamentals course. I wish there was even more of her. Hopefully in the future.

Elizabeth
 

I bought this and the intro class and love them both! I had no idea fonts, typefaces and typesetting could be so interesting and detailed. Ilene is a clear and informative teacher. I love that she teaches why things are done, not simply "do this". I learn faster and remember better with her style of instruction.

Student Work

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