UDMessenger

Volume 12, Number 4, 2004


Making space for the finer points of typography

As Hendrik-Jan Francke teaches his graphic design students the finer points of typography, he continually circulates through the classroom, looking over shoulders and offering advice as the students experiment with various styles and shapes of letters.

"When I do this in the classroom, it's very labor intensive and not especially efficient," he says, adding that students would do better to work at their own pace and get immediate feedback on their efforts.

Soon, they will be able to do just that through an online tutorial system the assistant professor of art has developed.

The system, now at the prototype stage, is an interactive, web-based workshop to teach kerning--the art of adjusting the spacing between letters and words to make the type more visually appealing and easier to read. Kerning might seem esoteric, but Francke says it's an essential skill in the field of graphic design.

"Typefaces are very complex, and the spacing in a word might look fine when it's the size of normal text," he says. "But, when you enlarge it to the size of a headline, the spacing often needs to be changed. It's a matter of taste and readability."

The online kerning workshop presents students a series of words, many of them with letter combinations that result in awkward spacing. One of the first examples given is the upper-case "DELAWARE," in which the first "A" seems set apart, with too much space on either side. The larger the letters, the more uneven the spacing appears.

On their individual computer screens, students try out different ways of varying the spacing until they have a result they like. They then click "submit," and an expertly kerned version of the word appears below theirs, allowing them to compare the two before moving on to the next example.

Francke says he will continue to lecture and do demonstrations in class, but students using the online system will be able to develop and practice their skills on their own, making the learning process more efficient. The system, he says, is an update of one developed years ago by Prof. Ray Nichols, which used the University's old Plato computer system. The new version uses the Flash software platform and is vastly improved by the new technology, Francke says.

The project was partly funded by a grant from The PRESENT. Francke's students helped set up the prototype and wrote some of the material that's part of the online workshop, including summaries of the history and description of various typefaces.