[HN Gopher] KernType - A Letter Spacing Game
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KernType - A Letter Spacing Game
Author : antidnan
Score : 199 points
Date : 2023-07-27 01:46 UTC (21 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (type.method.ac)
(TXT) w3m dump (type.method.ac)
| mcny wrote:
| Reminds me of the xkcd joke in 1015: if you really hate someone,
| teach them to recognize bad kerning.
|
| https://xkcd.com/1015/
|
| I tried a few of the fonts. I never really liked monospace but I
| really dislike making decisions. If I had to make a font, I'd
| probably use monospace. My understanding is the whole problem
| goes away with monospace, right?
|
| Edit:
|
| I am having a difficult time articulating my thoughts on this.
|
| Let me just spell it out: I think I can recognize truly horrible
| kerning. It makes it very difficult to read. However, the flip
| side is hard. I don't think about kerning when things work (most
| of the time). And I can't tell kerning issues from for example
| when I needed to use some Microsoft Windows Server machine who
| remembers back when and it didn't have ClearType. All I can tell
| is it is difficult for me to read. I can't really explain why.
|
| The flip side, recognizing good kerning I think is very difficult
| for me. I simply never think about it.
|
| For computer science people, maybe think of it as a
| satisfiability problem? It is fairly easy for a human to do the
| boolean satisfiability verification (where true is illegible and
| false is NOT illegible). However, as soon as you turn boolean
| satisfiability verification to something like k-sat, now the
| classification becomes (almost?) impossible because it is now
| subjective? Back to my simple terms, how can you say one kerning
| is better than another? Does it depend on the opinion of the
| person reading? Come to think of it, is kerning different in
| languages other than English? Everything I have said so far is
| all about English...
| maweki wrote:
| > if you really hate someone, teach them to recognize bad
| kerning.
|
| The city I'm living in was once famous for its printing history
| and there's a whole part of town full of old printworks that
| have slowly been converted to high price housing. One of the
| converted buildings has a stairwell that's fully visible
| through windows and it has in large vinyl letters different
| names of fonts in that specific font all over the walls. Like
| "papyrus" in Papyrus, "helvetica" in Helvetica, etc.
|
| And the kerning of those words is just the worst. It's so bad,
| you'd think that there are random spaces in those words.
|
| The kerning hurts my eyes. The irony pains me a few centimeters
| deeper.
| esafak wrote:
| Papyrus! As it happens I have a friend who worked on Avatar's
| graphic design and he loves this SNL sketch:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVhlJNJopOQ
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| This reminds me of a tattoo idea I'd like to get some day.
| The word "Helvetica" but printed in a bland serif font like
| times new roman.
| messe wrote:
| I've thought about getting almost the opposite:
| "Baskerville" printed in Comic Sans.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Excellent lol. Endless potential with this joke.
| esafak wrote:
| Or "papyrus" set in Comic Sans.
| https://youtu.be/jVhlJNJopOQ?t=175
| lying4fun wrote:
| I think this game somewhat agrees with you, because you can
| score 100% even if it looks like the deviation from the
| "solution" is not negligible. On the other side I think that
| "really good kerning" probably matters when it comes to type
| which is supposed to be looked at for a long time, or when it
| comes to graphics with much text, it feels like that good
| kerning consistency adds up to an overall more pleasant sight.
| hinkley wrote:
| If I ever meet Randall I will do a Ted Lasso 'thank you, fuck
| you' and the 'fuck you' will be about kerning.
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _KernType - A Kerning Game_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21913654 - Dec 2019 (36
| comments)
|
| _Kern Type: a kerning game_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11032912 - Feb 2016 (5
| comments)
|
| _Kern Type, The Kerning Game_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6791800 - Nov 2013 (23
| comments)
|
| _Show HN: KernType, a typography game made with Raphael_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3086320 - Oct 2011 (53
| comments)
|
| (now I'm off to see which of the 12 past submitters of the Bezier
| Game deserves a repost invite...)
| XCSme wrote:
| Should use all the user input to train a model to know what most
| people think is good looking kerning.
| [deleted]
| Raed667 wrote:
| I bet a lot of people just play around without much thought
| about how good it endsup looking
| [deleted]
| leipert wrote:
| I've set my Mac to replace ,,kerning" with ,,keming" and get a
| chuckle every time we have a font related discussion.
| Otternonsenz wrote:
| That visual pun was my Typography professor's favorite joke as
| we were learning about kerning, haha.
| hinkley wrote:
| The reddit forum about bad kerning is called r/keming
| whitmank wrote:
| Next/Previous letter should probably be UP and DOWN Arrow keys,
| not Tab and Shift+Tab.
|
| My opinion.
| Brendinooo wrote:
| I have a design degree and have spent time roughing out kerning
| pairs in FontForge, so while I'm sure I'm not the most qualified
| person in the world, I do have a bit of cred here.
|
| Kerning is hard, not just because of the skill you need to
| eyeball things well but because there is so much variance to
| account for. Very tedious.
|
| That said, I think there's an art to it, so it's probably fine
| that I disagreed with some of the choices.
|
| With Quijote, I wanted the u closer to the Q than the solution
| did. When I got to Toronto I tried to remember that, and ended up
| with a low score because the T and o were a lot closer together
| that time.
|
| I dunno. Hard to nail down. But fun! Nice project.
| Agentlien wrote:
| I know nothing of kerning and I made the exact same "mistakes"!
| twiss wrote:
| I think it's because the game is using a different font for
| each "round" (indicated in the bottom left corner), so there is
| no consistency across rounds. It would've been easier to
| learn/guess the "solutions" that way, but I think it's also
| interesting to see the different kerning decisions across
| different fonts.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Once in a former life, I was an assistant editor for a place that
| would do a lot of work for commercials with ad agencies. There
| was one client in particular that was known to be difficult to
| work with specifically because they thought of themselves as very
| particular about the kerning of their on screen text. After a
| while, the editor would get annoyed with the constant tweaking "a
| little more, a little bit less, perfect". So as a test, the
| editor just started tapping the keyboard to sound like key
| presses but without hitting a key to adjust the kerning. The same
| "a little more, a little less, perfect". The editor then just
| started doing what needed to be done, and then played the
| client's little game with new rules.
| DomenicoMazza wrote:
| An interesting game! Something to note is letters in typefaces
| are usually kerned in pairs--meaning when you tackle all the
| tricky pairs in a typeface, most problems are gone, such as when
| an angular letter meets a round one e.g. wo or a capital letter
| like an umbrella meeting most lowercase letters e.g. To, and some
| uppercase e.g TA. A lot of the 'problems' to solve in this game
| just wouldn't happen.
|
| If you were to tweak the game to build typography skills it'd be
| about pairs and you would have to look at the typeface at
| different sizes. In addition there are poorly kerned typefaces
| out there which show what happens when no or little kerning
| exists. You'll find all the common places kerning is required.
|
| Also would be fun to consider ligatures (joined letter pairs e.g.
| fl) that are possible too. A more stylistic way to deal with
| spacing between letters.
|
| In short, cute game. Not quite a real-world practice tool!
|
| Edit: the best version of this game would be to make a (or edit
| an open license) typeface :D and kern it
| monkeymeister wrote:
| Excellent. I am now addicted to kerning. Many thanks.
| hinkley wrote:
| Randall Munroe: If you hate someone, teach them about kerning.
| TheRealNGenius wrote:
| [dead]
| roflmaostc wrote:
| Fun game, just out of curiosity:
|
| Never received any training, I mostly use LaTeX so I'm a little
| aware of spacing and style.
|
| Had 82/100 as average. What's your score?
| anserin wrote:
| Personally, I got 90/100, I also have experience with TeX and
| I've designed a few fonts
| jaqalopes wrote:
| 93/100 here, wonder if there's a difference between mobile
| and desktop? I played on mobile and being able to bring my
| phone right up close to my eyes seemed to make it easier to
| judge the spacing than if I'd done it at my desk.
| antidnan wrote:
| Never done any font design. Initially I was getting 70s, but
| after playing it a few times over the last few weeks I think
| I've gotten the hang of it. Mid 90s on average now.
| pavon wrote:
| I didn't know it stopped and gave you a total score after a
| while. I figured it just kept going, and got bored at
| "gargantuan". At that point my scores ware bimodel - either 100
| or 80 depending on whether the font agreed with my spacing next
| to the leading capital letter.
| BtM909 wrote:
| How much fonts did you play?
| xiconfjs wrote:
| where can I display my average? (I got 100/100 on all but one
| time)
| h4l wrote:
| 95, using a phone and the old trick of squinting a bit to get a
| sense of the overall layout.
| jheriko wrote:
| your algorithm is bad and you should feel bad.
| TheRealNGenius wrote:
| [dead]
| misnome wrote:
| Disagreed with the first "Solution" (WAVE leaves too much space
| around E, looks unbalanced).
|
| Not disappointed.
| virtualritz wrote:
| Me too. The biggest issue is size. Fonts are cut to be typeset
| at certain sizes.
|
| Kerning depends on size. The smaller the font is displayed, the
| more it likely it is used for text were uniform looking kerning
| depends more on the upper third of a character.
|
| However, this page displays the fonts large, very large,
| depending on what display you look at it.
|
| So this has to be taken into account for the 'solution'. And
| furthermore, since the display is large, like a headline or
| logo, the kerning should consider the whole character, not just
| the upper part.
|
| Lastly that font size may we'll be against the intend of the
| typographer who cut the resp. font.
|
| I.e. if the font's internal kerning is used, that would then
| become an unreliable measure for 'correctness'.
| virtualritz wrote:
| As someone who studied typography, I disagree with many of the
| 'solutions' this game uses my kerning choices to grade against.
|
| Even in professional software like InDesign, you can choose
| between ad-hoc calculated optical kerning and the resp. font's
| kerning.
|
| These can differ considerably, depending on the intend and
| preferences of the typographer that designed the font and kerned
| it.
| MatthiasPortzel wrote:
| Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't optical kerning a fallback
| option for fonts that have no special kerning rules? When would
| you use it over the font designer's hand-specified kerning?
| virtualritz wrote:
| Not necessarily.
|
| See my other comment here about kerning depending on font
| size.
|
| A font may be kerned to be typeset at 10-16pt but you use it
| for headlines at 24p. The optical kerning may be better
| suited then.
| Spivak wrote:
| The game is for a different purpose. Once you can get by eye
| the "book" kerning you can start breaking the rules.
| user3939382 wrote:
| Is there such thing as book kerning? My impression is that
| it's an artistic decision.
| jfoutz wrote:
| All my knowledge of keming came from roundabout sources,
| but I think there are some pretty serous sources. I've
| never gotten around to
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computers_and_Typesetting but
| that's a pretty serious start.
|
| There's the normal stuff about rivers and lakes, but from
| the game Toronto is a kinda funny one, To ronto, what's
| ronto? why are you going there? I think there's a good
| amount of looking for potential mis-parses, and making sure
| the reader never slips out of reading, and is forced to re
| parse.
| hinkley wrote:
| <searches page for 'keming'>
|
| Damn you.
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(page generated 2023-07-27 23:01 UTC)