Kerning Like a Pro in Illustrator

Have you ever looked at a word or phrase you type, and something just looked off about it? In typography, kerning is the process of adjusting the spacing between characters or letters in the text. Tracking, on the other hand, adjusts space uniformly over a range of characters. I didn’t cover kerning in the previous videos, and I probably should have, it’s time to show you how to kern like a pro using the Type Tool and Touch Type Tool in Illustrator. 

How to Kern Using the Character Panel

The way to kern your type is in my character panel. To bring the character panel down, go to the menu, Window > Type > Character or the keyboard shortcut is Command T on a Mac or Control T on a PC.

• The kerning set-up is right below the font size in the Character panel. 
• I place my cursor between the two letters as above. And I can either enter a number or use the up or down arrows to get what I want. The up arrow moves the spacing to the right, and the down arrow moves the spacing to the left. 

How to Kern Using Keyboard Shortcuts

Or, if you want, and I prefer this method, using keyboard shortcuts.

• Place the cursor between the two letters, and press at the same time, Command Shift ] on a Mac to go right, Command Shift [ to go left. For a PC, hold the Control key, not the Command key. Or you can also try,
• Alt-Left or Right Arrow Keys to Increase or decrease kerning on a Mac, and Option-Left or Right Arrow Keys to Increase or decrease kerning on a PC! 
• To reset your kerning, Command Option Q on a Mac and Control Alt Q, on a PC and the numbers in the character panel will go back to zero. 

Kern the type using the Touch Type Tool

• Either select the Touch Type Tool in the Character Panel or the area type tool, hold until you see the Touch Type Tool icon. The keyboard shortcut is Shift T. The icon will change, of course, and it may ask you to select a character to get started.
• I hover over my type right here, and you can tell the icon has changed to show the touch-type tool small icon there. Select which letter you want to kern, and this tool is meant for improving the kerning of individual letters or also scaling or rotating a letter.
• Perhaps the most useful part of this tool if I select this once again just hit that touch-type tool button and choose a letter is for doing the kerning of the letters two letters. I’d recommend it is you’d select the letter you want to kern and then use your keyboard arrows to move it either left or right. If you add the Shift key to the arrows, the kerning jumps up to 10 steps. Much faster. 

This is a fast way to go in here and kind of kern up your words while still maintaining a fully live and editable type. An alternative method of doing this is you could go in there using the character panel and use the tracking, but tracking isn’t the way to go. 

Using the Up and Down, Left and Right Keys

Keep on making subtle changes until you think the overall kerning of these letters is pretty close. You could also use your keyboard keys to move it up and down you can click on the letter and then drag it around, but there’s no way to make sure it maintains its perfect horizontal or vertical position.

So if you want to make sure it’s a smooth horizontal or vertical move, you’re probably going to want to use your keyboard keys because you have much more precise control. It’s just a little bit slower than clicking on the actual letter and then moving it around.

But, that’s it for the touch type tool. It’s a very cool tool that I haven’t used much in the past at all because it’s just not the way I did things. I never really gravitated towards it after it was released in Adobe Illustrator CC but I probably should have because it’s a handy tool that can save you a lot of time and allow you to make some pretty powerful edits very quickly and easily to your type while still having your type be fully editable we’re in the past I would either use the tracking or

Click here to watch the video.