I see my confusion. I assumed the "why" used was about why they chose to do it that way, because the characteristics of it that cause it to look bad are obvious and don't require an explanation.
It's hard to do right. When it's done well (the font designer spent time making sure all the letter pairs look good together), it's totally invisible and thankless. But when it's done poorly, like in this case, it really jumps out at you.
Interactive web mini-game about kerning if you want to try your own hand at it: https://type.method.ac/
Auto-kerning is one of my favorite features of Adobe products (as opposed to many other graphics & text editors). Even when using a font that doesn't have a built-in "kern table" that the font creator should've included to optimize the "most beautiful" spacing between any two letters, Adobe can algorithmically guesstimate it using their "optical kerning" system that tries to estimate an ideal spacing based on the look of the adjacent characters: https://helpx.adobe.com/incopy/using/kerning-tracking.html. Some open-source software, like FontForge, can also try to guess: https://fontforge.org/docs/ui/mainviews/metricsview.html
As is tradition, article doesn't actually explain "why".
And ... man that's a mountain out of a molehill kinda problem.
It does: it says the kerning is bad and explains the basics of how the kerning is off.
Yes, it does that, but it never actually explains the "why" that the title promised.
> Instead, in analyzing the kerning, he found that each letter appears to be spaced equally from the furthest edge of each glyph
This is why it looks bad. Why they chose to do it this way is still a mystery.
I see my confusion. I assumed the "why" used was about why they chose to do it that way, because the characteristics of it that cause it to look bad are obvious and don't require an explanation.
I misunderstood the meaning of the headline.
That's why it looks that way, but not why it IS that way.
Overview of what "kerning" is: https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/design/discover/kerning....
It's hard to do right. When it's done well (the font designer spent time making sure all the letter pairs look good together), it's totally invisible and thankless. But when it's done poorly, like in this case, it really jumps out at you.
Interactive web mini-game about kerning if you want to try your own hand at it: https://type.method.ac/
Auto-kerning is one of my favorite features of Adobe products (as opposed to many other graphics & text editors). Even when using a font that doesn't have a built-in "kern table" that the font creator should've included to optimize the "most beautiful" spacing between any two letters, Adobe can algorithmically guesstimate it using their "optical kerning" system that tries to estimate an ideal spacing based on the look of the adjacent characters: https://helpx.adobe.com/incopy/using/kerning-tracking.html. Some open-source software, like FontForge, can also try to guess: https://fontforge.org/docs/ui/mainviews/metricsview.html
There is also research into using ML to do this (seems like overkill): https://arxiv.org/html/2402.14313v2
I hate headlines that sound they have answers when in reality the entire article is a lead up to…nothing
Next up: why is the weather at is so cold!
“Because it’s 5degrees Celsius”
Can't wait for the Dan Brown novel about how this has meaning.
Enshittification has made it to the Vatican…
The spacing between the letters is off, saved you a click