Understanding the differences between kerning, tracking, and leading is essential for any designer or content creator who works with type. Kerning, tracking, and leading are all closely related type settings, however, they each serve a specific purpose and should be used accordingly. Kerning is the process of adjusting the space between individual letters, tracking is the process of adjusting the space between a range of characters, and leading is the process of adjusting the space between lines of type. Each of these settings can have a major impact on the overall look and feel of a design, so it’s important for designers and content creators to understand how and when to use them. In this blog post, we’ll break down the key differences between kerning, tracking, and leading, and offer advice on how to use these settings to improve the readability and visual impact of your design or content.
What is tracking?
Similar to kerning, tracking concentrates on the distances between all of the letters in a word rather than just a select few. Tracking is typically uniform, which means you leave the same amount of space between each letter so it doesn’t look too tight or spaced out.
Tracking is frequently used by designers to address problems like orphans and widows Orphans are paragraphs that begin with the first line on one page but continue on the following page. A widow is a section of a paragraph that is on its own line in a different column and isn’t connected to the rest of the paragraph. By placing the words closer together or farther apart, a designer can fix these problems.
What is kerning?
If the font makes a certain letter appear too far from or too close to another, the spacing between those two letters or characters in a word can be adjusted using the kerneling technique. It can be challenging to read letters that are too close together because they may blend together.
On the other hand, if letters are too close together, it might not be as obvious where they belong. Minimal changes to kerning are often undetectable. However, because it affects the legibility of words, kerning can significantly enhance the overall design.
Differences between kerning, tracking and leading
To enhance the look and readability of text in a design, the processes of kerning, tracking, and leading all involve changing the letter spacing. However, each has distinctive characteristics that set them apart from one another. Here are a few of the biggest differences:
Visual outcome
Designers can alter the appearance of letters or words in their designs by using kerning, tracking, and leading. Kerning produces a balanced visual result that draws readers’ attention to the title or heading in bold. When you want to use a particular font but don’t like the way the spacing looks, tracking can be helpful. Leading is a practical technique for creating striking effects that enable the designer to grab the reader’s attention with headlines.
Design process
You can also use kerning, tracking, and leading in a variety of ways. Tracking can be applied at any stage of the design process, as opposed to designers using kerning and leading to complete the overall design.
Tracking, which applies spacing to individual words, is one of the editing process’s initial steps. Leading will usually follow tracking. Then, because it affects headings, titles, or logos, kerning is one of the last things to be adjusted. Otherwise, the kerning adjustments you have already made may be impacted by leading and tracking. Some software programs have built-in tools for these processes. To create a unified look, many graphic designers opt to manipulate them themselves.
Uses
For headlines and medium to large fonts, kerning is most frequently used. This is due to the fact that larger font sizes increase your likelihood of noticing the spacing and sentence structure. Certain letter combinations that frequently appear crowded when placed next to one another can also benefit from kerning. A few examples of these combinations include Wa or Av.
Designers most often use leading to correct ascenders or descenders. Nowadays, a lot of software doesn’t take ascenders or descenders—letters that go above or below the baseline—into account. These letters can be, for instance, h, t, g, or y. When using specific fonts, leading can be a helpful tool to prevent these letters from overlapping. When a font is difficult to read or has bold letters that wrap into other spaces, tracking is most helpful.
What is leading?
Leading is the spacing between multiple lines of text. Too large a space between lines of text can disrupt the reader’s ability to follow the text as a whole. Use leading sparingly because it can significantly alter the meaning of the text. Leading results from an antiquated typesetting practice of inserting lead pieces between text blocks. Today, you can complete leading using a variety of computer programs, giving you the right amount of space between lines of text.
Why are these concepts important?
It is crucial to comprehend how these ideas differ for the following reasons:
Tips for kerning, tracking and leading
Here are some pointers you can use as you start to modify your typography’s kerning, tracking, and leading:
Typography: What is Kerning, Tracking and Leading?
FAQ
What is the difference between kerning and?
Leading and kerning both alter the spacing in a section of text. Leading takes care of the vertical spaces between lines of text, which is frequently important when writing magazine articles, blog posts, and other types of written content. Kerning deals with the space between two characters or letters.
What is the difference between leading and tracking in typography?
While tracking examines the spacing between larger groups of letters and blocks of text, kerneling focuses on the adjustments of spaces between individual letters.
