FontCast #7 — Dyana Weissman on Kerning
As designers, kerning is one of those esoteric terms we love to use. Not only is it vital to quality typography, it’s also a great word to throw into a conversation with non-designers whenever we want to sound smart or abstruse. But how much do we really understand about kerning and how it’s applied? At ATypI in Mexico City I broached these topics with Dyana Weissman of The Font Bureau, one of the few type designers who claims to actually enjoy the tedious task of assigning thousands of kern pairs to each font. She explains the difference between kerning and spacing, why it should be done by hand, and the mystical concept of flow.
Click here to watch the FontCast or simply push play below.
Read more about Dyana’s process and listen to her soundtrack at Font Bureau’s Type 101 blog.
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8 Comments:
And then there’s people that still wonder why commercial fonts need to be licensed and paid for. All this work, and this is not even designing the typeface!
Dyana, You’re not alone. Other people do enjoy kerning too. Okay, well, at least I do too.
When I still worked at Magelaan I was the go-to guy to design tables, graphs, forms, reply cards, and whatnot. I think I understand what you mean with the “flow” – though apparently nobody in my environment does. God is in the details, baby. (And he loves the Acme Novelty Library.)
cool, thanks! and i agree about the details!
oh and cool kerning mix!!!
Great interview.
Not great to listen to on headphones. The background music constantly pans back and forth from left to right.
Distracting/nauseating.
good interview, but the background sound nerves even with speakers!
…and I’m sure that’s only touching the surface, but it makes for a good clip, thanks!
I wish I could experience ‘flow’ more often - I’ve only been aware of it on very rare occasions when I’ve been working on something for a while, usually having gone without food for ages or letting a hot cup of coffee go stone-cold in front of me, despite being thirsty. It’s also annoying when you get snapped out of it by any kind of interruption, and a shame that it almost certainly can’t be achieved in an office environment…!
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