Kerndown mini task

Kerning: the spacing between glyphs

Task: After an introduction lecture on the subject of Grids, Kerning & Branding we where to get into small groups and pick out 4-6 random letters made of foam in Helvetica typeface. The letters we chose as a group were uppercase N, O, G and E. Spelling out of course ‘Gone’ immediately we noticed that the O was going to be challenging to kern to the rest of the letters.

 The aim of the game (whilst the music from countdown was putting on the pressure) was to use the letters and kerning to produce a style appropriate to whatever our lecturer named:

1.     A luxury car brand

We decided to space the letters out equally in the hope it would portray class and I guess the space you get in the cars.

2.     Budget food brand

For this we had children/teenagers in mind as the target audience as this is usually what you see in the likes of McDonald’s. With this in mind we went for a quirky and fun arrangement of the letters.

3.     Condom company

Although a condom company definitely wants to portray that they are trustworthy and serious about the product we decided to go with a neat but playful approach, as the product is also used for fun! After organizing the type I saw the quirky O above the rest of the letters as the condom coming out of a packet. Gone could actually be an appropriate name - gone is the risk of getting pregnant (Well 99.9%) of it.

4.     Indie band

Indie bands usually have quite loose and informal music, easy listening and we wanted to portray that with the spacing and easy flowing vibe. We were immediately imagining the logo printed onto an album cover or tote bag - that is why we went with the square/rectangle shape.

5.     IT company

With this we wanted to show the seriousness of the company along with it being modern, bringing people and computers together, connecting them – therefore the letters are close but not touching just yet. For this one we also decided to change the arrangement of the letters, to sound more like an IT company, Gone doesn't really seem to fit!

Something to think about: if the letters in a typeface are touching it creates negative space, around the glyphs like Fedex for example used this cleverly, however if you don’t want to have to think about what can be seen in the space, don’t allow the glyphs to touch.