Keming

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Kerning is the typographic term for the spacing between letters or characters in a piece of text to be printed.

Keming is what it looks like when you fuck up the kerning.

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The kerning on the pope’s tomb is a travesty (www.fastcompany.com)

submitted 1 week ago by litchralee to c/[email protected]

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I make no opinion on the Catholic faith or the Pope, but this just seems unusually lazy to mess up on such a high profile commission. No one spotted this before unveiling??

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The article explains it clearly: There is no kerning at all. The letters are simply spaced equally from the furthest edge and then the whole thing is centered. It's a perfect example of why kerning is important and how it makes typeface look better.

[–] litchralee 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

I would argue that monospacing a non-monospace typeface is a kerning decision, but it's a monumentally bad one. The fact that it's bad enough to make the news also shows that it simply looks wrong even to the untrained eye. To that end, good kerning isn't just an extravagance but a crucial part of typesetting. They screwed up here and that just makes it sad.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

I agree with you. I'm just saying that "kerning" is the name of the process that they didn't do. I bet the maker hadn't heard of it before the world saw this stone, and they probably fired their craftsmen when they got cnc engraver because "how hard could it be?"