Kerning groups
When you need to kern many similar glyphs at once, like A
, À
, Â
and Á
, you can now save much time by linking the kerning values of all accented glyphs to a single one, like the original A
.
So once you have kerned the two pairs AV
and VA
, all the other pairs like ÀV
, ÂV
, ÁV
and VÀ
, VÂ
, VÁ
will be automatically created. How cool is that? 😀
Now how about linking only the left sides of your C
, G
and Q
with the kerning values from your O
- but only when it's the second letter of a kerning pair, like VO
?
Well, kerning groups can also be used to constrain a single side of glyphs. For instance, you can link all kerning values related to the left side of the glyph Æ
to the pairs ending with an A
, like TA
or VA
, so you don't have to kern TÆ
or VÆ
.
Create kerning groups
The kerning table now contains 2 tabs, one for Pairs and one for Groups.
We recommend to start creating your kerning groups before making kerning pairs in order to avoid duplicate work.
- A kerning group is created when you assign a specific character (the group master) to the left side or the right side of another glyph, based on their shapes' similarity.
- A kerning group starts having an impact when you create a new kerning pair (the master pair) that involves the master character.
- All the group members will then get the same kerning value, and you can view all the sibling pairs that have been generated by clicking on the + sign on the left side of a master pair.
In other words, you can tell Fontself that the left or right side of a glyph should get the same kerning value as another character, thus leading to precise adjustments.
Kerning group exceptions
If you need to apply a different value for a specific kerning pair that is part of a group, you can unlink the value from the master pair by clicking on the lock icon:
Ok, so which groups to create?
Well, that will highly depend on the design of your typeface, but here are a few tips.
Pairing with a rounded group master
Left side
O: C G Q
o: c d e g q
Right side
O: D Q
o: b p
Pairing with accented characters
For capitals, the grouping can be pretty straightforward:
Left side
A: Æ Á Â Ä À Å Ã
Right side
A: Á Â Ä À Å Ã
E: Æ
Due to kerning issues with lowercase accented characters - like Ta
and Tä
- you might have to split a group in two, with the non-accented character like a
serving as a first group master, and an accented character like ä
as a second master for the accented lowercase characters.
Left side
a: æ
ä: á â ä à å ã
Right side
ä: á â ä à å ã
e: æ
Want to learn more? Check these great resources!
- Simple visual explanation on TheTypeWorkshop
- Detailed explanations on DesignShack
- The Kerning Game by Method of Action