Most of the knowledge we receive is obtained by reading. So, it is wise to pay attention to words when designing. Typography has many aspects, but one of the things that will help you improve the quality of the design is letter-spacing.
The fact is that people simply don’t give enough credit to typography. The importance of the space between the letters is one of the vital aspects when it involves web design. As a web designer, if you employ typography, you’re committed to developing a revolutionary web design.
Let’s start!
What is Typography?
Web typography is a technique of editing and ordering types (fonts) in a creative way in web design. Well, typography isn’t limited to punching letters and characters in web design.
The importance lies in building the visual character of the website and also the communication it establishes with the viewers.
What Are Fonts?
A font is a set of text characters that may be displayed in an exceedingly specific style and size. The kind design for a group of fonts is typeface and variations of this design frame the font family.
In practice, font and typeface are often used without great precision, sometimes alternately.
Uses of Fonts
Size, spacing, thickness, serif or sans serif, and font style are factors that contribute to the selection and use of fonts. So, disparate fonts set disparate tones and convey different moods.
It is important to recall that a lot of letters, like Broadway (for example), are only suitable in certain settings and in small amounts.
When designing logos, memos, flyers, etc. Designers attempt to persist with one or two letters.
What Is Letter-Spacing?
The space between letters (also called character spacing or tracking) is the amount of space between a group of letters. The number of spaces between letters within the text can affect readability.
The narrow space between letters, especially in small text sizes, may be difficult to read.
On the other hand, an excessive amount of space for the purpose that individual letters become isolated may also destroy readability.
In addition to letter spacing, word spacing is another CSS property that will be specified to further adjust the display of text. Word spacing is the size of the space between words.
Why Do We Use Letter-Spacing?
The main purpose of the space between letters is to enhance the readability and legibility of the text. Words work differently reckoning on size, color, and background.
Adapting the spacing of letters to the environment you’re working with will help readers spend your data faster and more efficiently. The fun part is that they will not even notice it – that is the whole point of the work.
Keep in mind that typographers give some thought to the space between letters and kerning when designing fonts. This implies that you just don’t need to apply it to the full text, but to know when it’s needed, you ought to know some basic principles and use good letters.
How Letter-Spacing Affects Text Legibility?
The space between the letters is the horizontal space between the characters of the text. Letter spacing often named tracking in print design can have a significant impact on readability, an excessive amount of space between letters makes it difficult to read the text and slows down reading speed.
On the other hand, too small an area between the letters also slows down the reading speed, and not only makes it difficult to read but can even make the text unreadable.
Brief History
Historically, manipulating the space between letters has been a method often used when placing newspapers.
The pressure of short deadlines meant that journalists didn’t have the luxury of having the ability to rewrite sentences so as to better fit the physical space allotted to them on the page.
To work around this, the designers would insert an area between the letters – first manually, and later digitally – so the kind line would better fill the allotted space.
On the web, where the available space is potentially infinite, the space between letters is typically used for an additional prominent historical use case — creating a definite aesthetic effect for content like titles and headings, quotes, and banners.
Capital Letters
Capital letters are designed with the intention of appearing at the start of a sentence or proper name, combined with lowercase letters.
When the capital letters are next to every other, the space between them is just too narrow. So, to attain better readability, it’s necessary to extend the space, this is applicable to both large and tiny font sizes.
Note: It’s nearly always an honest idea to extend the space between the letters in capital letters. The default capitalization is intended to be minimally necessary, so you’ll usually want to feature a bit more breathing space between characters.
Font Size
The relationship between font size and font spacing is pretty clear — while the font size increases, the font spacing decreases, and while the font size decreases, the font spacing increases. More practically, here’s what the connection looks like:
-Large text (e.g. titles and headings) should have a reduced space between letters.
-The main text should have a default tracking or be kept very near the default letter spacing.
-Very small text should have an increased space between letters.
Font Weight
As in the case with font size, the connection between font-weight and letter spacing follows an easy pattern — while the weight increases, the font spacing decreases, and while the weight decreases, the font spacing increases.
This is thanks to the way the kinds of letters look and feel at certain weights. Light letter types have an airy aesthetic complemented by letter-spacing, while bold letters have a dark and heavy aesthetic that’s complemented by letter convergence.
Conclusion – Keep An Eye on Letter-Spacing
When setting the type, the details are really important. How big? How small? What is the height of the line? How many spaces between letters?
All of these choices use reading your text and can vary greatly from letter to letter. It is understandable that you pay as much attention to the readability of your text as possible, in order to convey the message effectively.
