Typographic type and adjustments

In this session we looked at some basic typographic principles. We discussed what is Alignment, Kerning, Adjustment, Tracking, Leading and Baseline. After that we had to pick a quote related to art and try different adjustments to it. First we had to write the quote in Illustrator using the Helvetica bold fond and leave it as it is, then we had to make it as how we think it should look right and last to make one with messed up line spacing, kerning, alignment and leading. All of that using the  ''Character panel'' 

Designed by Shahir Zag, this “How to Piss Off Your Designer Friends and Give Them a Migraine” poster is made of Helvetica Bold with messed up line spacing, kerning and alignment. 

Leading 

Leading is the distance between the baselines in the paragraph. A baseline is the imaginary guideline that type sits on. The standard porportion of leading to type size is typically 120%. So if the type size is 20 point, then the most standard leading would be 24 point.

 Expanding the line spacing, or increasing the leading from 120%, creates a lighter more open text block. As leading increases, lines of type become more independent graphic elements rather than parts of a paragraph.

Reducing the leading from 120% creates a denser element while risking collisions of ascenders anddescenders (see the "Eye of the Tiger" above). 

Kerning

Kerning is an adjustment of space between two specific letters.  The goal of kerning is to create a consistent rhythm of space within a group of letters and to create an appearance of even spacing between letters. Fonts have exact amounts of spacing between letter combinations already built into it, which is called Metric Kerning. Type takes on Metric Kerning as a default. 

Manual Kerning - One helpful way to look at kerning is imagining that each space between kerning pairs is filled with liquid, and the same amount of liquid should put poured into each space.

Kerning can be manually adjusted in the kerning field in the character palette while the cursor is between two letters. But the faster and more commonly-used way is to use the shortcut by placing the cursor in the space you would like to kern, then hold down the option key while pressing the left/right arrow keys. Each click of the arrow key will adjust the kerning a little bit at a time.

Tracking 

Tracking is generalized: It uniformly affects the spacing between all the characters in a range of text. Tracking is normally adjusted to compensate for spacing problems caused by changes in point size (especially in very small and very large type). It is also used to adjust badly spaced passages of text.To adjust tracking, use the tracking field on the character palette.  For a shortcut, select the text you would like to track, and hold down the option key and press the left/right arrow keys.

Difference between Kerning and Tracking 

Typeface anatomy:

Typeface anatomy written down in notebook

Typeface anatomy  down in my notebook 

Different alignments: 

Left, right, centred and justified alignments

Justification without fine-tuning can result in gaping holes, loosely spaced lines and 'rivers' of white space. By adding word spacing it likely to get 'rivers' of white space, which can distract your reader's eye 

http://www.bigstockphoto.com/blog/typography-tutorial-leading-kerning-tracking