Above: Negative leading between the three words of this book title creates a simple typographic image that echoes the Image of a perfect ride, on the perfect wave, on the perfect day. The full bleed used with the Image is designed to give readers a sense of being on the board themselves, inside the gigantic curl.
Design by Regina Frank/ SDA Creative. USA
SPACING TYPE
Type is spaced both horizontally and vertically. Vertical spacing, or 'leading' {to rhyme with 'bedding'),• is measured in points from the baseline of one line of type to the baseline of the next. The amount should balance continuity and legibility.
Horizontally, each character is spaced proportionally to its width, using units as small as one-thousandth of an em. Digital typeface designers program special adjustments to thr spacing or 'kerning,' of difficult pairs of characters- such as AV and Te- into their fonts, and software will apply these automatically as type is set. Even with a well-kerned font; however, it will occasionally be necessary to make one-off adjustments to kerning, particularly in headlines.
Increasing or decreasing the spacing across several words or lines is known as tracking or range kerning, and can be used to alter the visual ‘colour’ of the typeface or on rare occasions as a cheat to help fit the text to the space available.
When text is justified across a column (see page 47), rules must be set up and carefully tweaked to tell the software how spacing is to be adjusted to achieve the required line length. Word spacing can be controlled independently to help balance excessive character spacing against unsightly gaps.