Book Cover Reviews discussion
Learning About Book Covers
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Typography 101: Basic Kerning
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Mod
One thing to help clarify for some: CB talks about "working with justified fonts." For those that don't know, this refers to those lines of text in books (or magazines or whatever) where all the lines are "flush" to the left AND flush to the right. It's called "justified text" and you can usually see it as a setting in your word processing program. So yeah, just like CB says, don't worry about kerning all that; let the justification process do its thing to spread the letters out to fill the line. Save kerning for really important words or short phrases. Like on the cover! :)
Also loving that "majestic" explanation and example. It's so true.
And BTW, there's a cool site that let's you play a game with kerning and test yourself. You can see it in the Resources section here. It's called KernType.
Thanks, C.B., I didn't know how to do it in Word. Way back when, I had to do it in WordPerfect (the go-to word processing program 20 years ago). Some letter combinations don't work well in certain fonts, and if you don't adjust the kerning, it looks like a mistake was made. It is really important to make the cover look professional.
Diana wrote: "Thanks, C.B., I didn't know how to do it in Word. Way back when, I had to do it in WordPerfect (the go-to word processing program 20 years ago). Some letter combinations don't work well in certai..."
Yes! Exactly. Many fonts are alright by themselves, but for something as important as a book cover it really helps to adjust the kerning. Even just a little time here can improve your overall cover by strides!
:)
Yesterday, I was trying to layout a book using full justification (flush left and right margins). I originally used MS Word, but there are very few adjustments that you can make to tweak its justification algorithm. So I turned to Scribus. If you want to play with kerning (is this also called "character tracking?"), Scribus is a freeware, open source powerhouse.For the cover, I used Inkscape for the words, then ported the .png files into Gimp for the layout. Both Gimp and Inkscape are free, open-source programs. The first mimics the utility of Photoshop, and the second mimics that of Illustrator.
I never heard of those two programs. Neat.
Mod
Welcome, B.C.! And good info about Scribus; it's new to me.
FYI: "Kerning" is the space BETWEEN letter pairs in a word. It's NOT "tracking," which is the OVERALL spacing of a word's letters. Kerning is more focused. Q: Can Scribus do BOTH Kerning and Tracking at same time?
I had never heard of kerning until a few weeks ago, when someone commented on it for my cover. I was told that some font designers are less attentive to kerning issues than they should be. Is that true? Or can the cover designer make the necessary changes?
Eileen,Some fonts have more of a need for kerning than others. It does have a lot to do with the font design.
Quite a few of the really long lived professional fonts around come with different ligatures to improve the kerning. The best example is the i+f combo. Often you will see the font automatically change it to an 'if' combo ligature, with the dot of the i hidden.
Generally kerning in normal text with normal fonts will be just fine. Sometimes you get into issues with fancier fonts. I have seen a font that typed 'an' like 'a n'. I would avoid a font like that for text in a big document.
Your book title should be kerned though, regardless of font. A title is only a few words, so making any font look its best is a good idea.
The cover designer would probably do that anyways if they were worth their salt, :) It isn't necessary to adjust the font file itself however.
C.B. wrote: "Eileen,Some fonts have more of a need for kerning than others. It does have a lot to do with the font design.
Quite a few of the really long lived professional fonts around come with different l..."
Thanks, C.B. All good things to learn.
A cover designer should definitely be able to handle kerning.
I've just been doing my own kerning on my cover by putting every letter on a different layer and then moving them around. My problem is I don't know if I should be going for a consistent gap between the letters, something you might be able to measure with the grid lines, or if it's a more fluid and subjective effect that works best. If so, are there any guidelines?
Kerning is all about your eyes. overall try for letters to be the same distance apart, but then use your eyes to feel it. :) look and see, move each layer a pixel at a time and feel it.
Mod
http://type.method.ac
EDIT: Forgot to say: you want the letters of every word to "feel" balanced or equidistant from their neighbors. Which means you'll have to adjust some to actually be closer or farther apart, but they'll give the impression of balanced spacing. Hope that makes sense.
Ummm. Thanks. I'll keep practicing. Please take a look at my cover for Living in Suspension. I didn't kern the title. It looked okay to me. But I kerned the two smaller versions of my name, trying to get that "majestic" look. Would love to know what you think.
Mod
Your "majestic" name in #1 looks OK from here.
On your main title, kerning is pretty good as is, although you're shrinking (compressing/horiz. scaling) the word "SUSPENSION" to fit and it now doesn't match the line above ("LIVING IN"), which may give a strange emphasis to the wrong words (unless that's want you want). Try treating all three words the same and see what happens.
Harald wrote: "Q: Can Scribus do BOTH Kerning and Tracking at same time? "After reading that Winifred has been manipulating layers to achieve the kerning she wants, I thought I ought to answer Harald's question of almost a month ago (sorry, didn't see it at the time).
Scribus can do leading, tracking, and kerning at the same time. Note Bene: you must do your layout in Scribus as the effect doesn't carry over in a cut and paste.
Inkscape is a vector graphics program that I have been using for text effects. It also makes leading, tracking, and kerning (pixel by pixel) fairly easy. You then save your work as a .png file and import it into your layout.
Both Scribus and Inkscape are freeware. I have no affiliation with either organization. I only mention them because a) they're free; and b) they work for me.
Here's a 'How To' for Leading, Tracking and Kerning in Scribus
Until this article, I had been pronouncing "leading" like "leading lady" instead of "the leading of the pencil." Which brings me to a joke:
What's the difference between an auto worker and a chemist? The way they pronounce "unionized."
Wait, does it have to be funny to be a joke?
I approve of all bad puns that end up in this thread!
BC wrote: "Which brings me to a joke:What's the difference between an auto worker and a chemist? The way they pronounce "unionized."
Wait, does it have to be funny to be a joke?
As someone with a degree in chemistry, I approve that joke as funny!
Typography is hard to master, but even just knowing the basics can help you with your cover designs, interior book design, and even advertising for your book.
The lesson in this topic is Kerning. What better way than to start with the best Typography joke around?
Question: What is Keming?
Answer: Kerning that still needs adjusting!
Real Question: What is Kerning?
Kerning is the adjusting of the spacing between letters in a font to make them more pleasing to the eye. The goal is to make the characters look uniformly the same distance apart.
Kerning Example: A few little tweaks can make a difference! The Letter 'A', The Letter 'V', and the font 'Papyrus' are notoriously bad kerners.
Most of the time it isn't necessary to mess with the kerning. In interior book design it is almost unheard of to adjust the kerning, as you are working with justified fonts. Book cover titles, ads, and chapter headings though can often benefit from kerning.
Computers are fine things, but they lack an 'eye' for visuals. They use math to determine letter spacing, which can often lead to unappealing results visually. Certain fonts often have more problems with auto-kerning than others, so if you are using a non-standard font you will have a higher chance of needing to adjust!
So the big question is how can you use kerning to help you? Well the most obvious example is on your book cover.
Graphic programs have kerning settings - normally shown as an A<->V symbol, and even in Word you can do this (Press Ctrl D with the letters selected, it is on the second tab). With a little effort you can adjust the letters individually to make your letters look just that much nicer and more professional. It is all about looking at the font you are using and playing with it. A few minutes here can help your cover look more pleasing!
Another way to use kerning to your advantage is to make tight small text appear to be more epic. The prime example of this on your cover is probably your author name! If you pick a smaller font than you have for the space you can increase the kerning to give it a real majestic feel. You can see this effect used all the time on movie posters.
Majestic Example: Giving yourself more breathing room and not only help fill a space, it can make you look more important!
Hopefully this helps you with the basics of kerning! If you have any questions, examples, or helpful tips be sure to post them here!
If you have a topic - typography or otherwise - you would like explained, let us know and we will do that next!
- CB