From: https://www.indesignskills.com/
Kerning is the process of increasing or decreasing the space between individual characters, adjusting the position of letters in relation to others. It’s commonly used on prominent pieces of text, such as headlines and logos. Note that tracking, on the other hand, is used to adjust the letter-spacing uniformly over a range of characters (read more about tracking).
Although the process of tweaking kerning may be very subtle, it can have significant effects on the legibility and overall presentation of text.
Designers kern letters to improve the overall symmetry of a word or phrase, which the default tracking settings provided in the font file may not be able to achieve alone.
As well as having an instant beautifying effect on text, kerning can also have an effect on the readability of the text. When done well, words just read better.
However, a note of caution! There are many infamous examples on the web of kerning gone wrong, when poorly kerned letters have formed unintended or, in some cases, downright rude, words.
In InDesign, you can adjust kerning from either the Controls panel running along the top of the workspace or the Character panel (Window > Type & Tables > Character).
Select the Type Tool (T), click your cursor to the left or right side of a letter, and increase or decrease the kerning (which is measured in thousandths of an em) by choosing from the default options (which jumps in sequences of 5’s, 10’s, 25’s and 100’s) or typing in a number.
Here, we’re going to find out more about letter-spacing or Tracking, including what it is and how you can adjust letter-spacing to improve your own design work.
Tracking is the typographer’s term for letter-spacing. Sometimes confused with kerning (which is used to adjust spacing between individual letters), tracking adjusts the letter-spacing uniformly over a range of characters.
Tracking affects the visual density of a word, phrase or paragraph. Decreasing the tracking makes the words appear more compact, while increasing tracking increases the amount of white space between letters and words, creating a more airy effect.
Designers apply tracking for two main reasons:
In the second image the tracking has been reduced. This pushes all the letters closer together, causing the same number of words to fit onto less lines (which removes the widow ‘eat’).
In InDesign, you can adjust kerning from either the Controls panel running along the top of the workspace or the Character panel (Window > Type & Tables > Character).
Use your Type Tool (T) cursor to either highlight the text or use the Selection Tool (V, Escape) to select the whole text frame*.
The tracking option is indicated by an ‘A V’ symbol with an arrow sitting below, and is found alongside the other most commonly used text formatting options in the Controls or Character panel. Measured in thousandths of an em, you can either choose a positive (to increase the spacing) or negative (to decrease) value from the drop-down menu, or type in a numeric value in the text box.
*For a linked sequence of text frames selecting the first text frame will apply the tracking settings to the text flowing across all the frames.
Here, we’re going to find out more about leading (or line spacing), including what it is and how you can apply it in your own design work.
The definition of leading is: the distance between two baselines of lines of type. The word ‘leading’ originates from the strips of lead hand-typesetters used to use to space out lines of text evenly. The word leading has stuck, but essentially it’s a typographer’s term for line spacing.
Leading is one of the quickest and simplest tweaks you can do to make your text look instantly better.
If you’re working in design software like InDesign, the program will set a default leading value whenever you type up more than one line of text. However, this is not usually generous enough, and can make paragraphs look squashed. This works fine if you’re creating a crammed front page for a newspaper, but less well for most other purposes.
Increasing the leading allows the text to breathe and makes it appear instantly more attractive. For readers it has practical advantages too—increasing leading makes text easier to read, and it’s also kinder on reader’s eyes over longer periods of reading.
So if you’re designing a book or magazine layout, increasing your leading will ensure your audience is captive for longer.
When working in InDesign, once you’ve created a piece of text using the Type Tool (T), you can adjust the leading from either the Controls panel running along the top of the workspace or the Character panel (Window > Type & Tables > Character). To edit the leading across a whole section of text, either highlight the text or click on the text frame to select it.
Leading is always positioned below or next to the Font Size option. Setting the leading to Auto will apply InDesign’s default leading for the font size you currently have applied. You should see this as a minimum value for your leading. Increasing the leading (which is measured in points, pt) will increase the line-spacing across your paragraph.
To apply a particular leading value to just one line of text (e.g. if you want to separate a paragraph visually from a heading positioned above), highlight the line you want to shift downwards and increase the leading.