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Kerning in Apple Keynote

Somehow over the last year or so when I tried figuring out how to do kerning in Apple Keynote I didn’t get it. For some reason I assumed it was like other applications and I guess it’s not. Sigh. Anyway, this is here for me so I get it right when I forget, and maybe for you!

If you aren’t a type nerd, kerning is the process of adjusting the spacing between characters in a proportional font, usually to achieve a visually pleasing result. Yup. It’s not tracking, or character spacing, which is different. But Keynote is confusing. Ugh.

My first mistake was trying to put the cursor between two letters, because that’s how other applications do it. Well, don’t do that. It doesn’t work. (Doing so affects the entire line of type!)

Don’t highlight two characters and try to adjust the kerning. It adjusts the space between the two letters and the space after the last letter. What!?

Right, so… Just select the one character you want to adjust the space after! In this case I selected the “A” in the word “Avenue”…

Now under the Format Menu, select Font, then Character Spacing and you can Tighten or Loosen. You’re better off just using Command-Option-[ and Command-Option-] though.

Hey, look at that! We’ve done it. Kerning. Adjusting the space between two characters. Amazing. I mean, you don’t get actual numerical values like other applications, but you just go with the visual spacing and that’s the best you can do.

The weird thing to me is that it’s not called kerning, and instead called “character spacing”, and the reason I think it’s weird is because Keynote was created for Steve Jobs, who was a big typography nerd. Maybe it was named as such to not be as confusing to non-typography nerds, but in doing so, it confuses typography nerds.

That’s part of a larger issue I’ve seen in computing over the last 25 years or so. The “dumbing down” or “simplifying” of things that are at all complex or even slightly obscure, so that people without the requisite knowledge in a specific area can understand things. Maybe that’s not the worst thing, but I still think it sort of penalizes the people who have advanced knowledge in a subject.

Anyway, that’s how do you kerning in Apple Keynote.

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Bay View Printing Company

Type

I stopped by the Bay View Printing Co recently to get some advice from Ashley Town about a project I’m working on. She was kind enough to give me a tour and show me some of the presses and other equipment, and I got to check out some of the type they have, including some of the wood type. which is just… beautiful.

Type

They’re about half way to their goal with an Indiegogo campaign to raise some funds. Here’s the pitch from Ashley:

I’m raising funds to be able to offer classes, workshops and open studio time focused on the art of letterpress printing and to transform a portion of the current space into a community gallery. The vision is to transform this Bay View institution into a creative hub for artists, designers, writers and letterpress novices and enthusiasts.

I personally think this place is a great addition to Milwaukee’s creative community, and would love to see it get fully funded.

Type

And hey, who else uses the hashtag #drinkandink? Check out the rest of the photos and their campaign video below.

Type

Type

Printing

Printing

Wood & Lead Type!

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Single Stroke Font

I needed a single stroke font for some laser cutting. You’d think that would be an easy thing… Well, keep reading.

When laser etching, any font could be used. You can raster etch the type, or “vector etch” the type. Raster etching takes a long time, and vector etching (basically doing a low-power vector “cut”) is fast. If you’re doing 3,000 pieces, the time can make a huge difference!

Regular font

Here’s a normal font in Inkscape. Fonts consist of an outline which is then filled with a color. In this case, the outline of the font is filled with black and you see what you normally see when viewing a font on a computer screen.

Regular font

Here’s the normal font with the fill set to none and the stroke (outline) set to a thin line. You could laser etch this (and some people do) but you’re now outlining the letters instead of just etching them with a single stroke. This is fine, but takes more time. Since going really fast is our goal, this doesn’t work.

At this point, you may be thinking “No problem! Our pals at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories have us covered with Hershey text, and engraving font!” Indeed, Hershey text is awesome, but not always the right solution. I use Hershey text often, and it’s lovely, but let’s keep exploring…

CamBam font

I found these CamBam fonts, which probably work quite well for a spinning bit that is cutting material, but there’s an issue:

All the fonts are built using a 100% overlap in the font design, which tricks my TrueType font design program into thinking they are really looped TrueType fonts, when they really don’t have an inside and outside loop.

CamBam font

A spinning bit cutting material is quite different than a laser cutting material. If you use this font to laser etch, it will double up, which mean you’re lasering the same thing twice. This takes longer, and cuts your material twice. No good.

You can manually go in and delete the overlaps, but it’s a time-consuming pain, and you’ve got better things to do.

Machine Gothic

I found Machine Tool Gothic, which looks a bit weird when you first select it, but we’ll fix that. Remember that fonts are typically outlines that are filled with a color. That’s what is happening here.

Fixing Machine Gothic

We just need to set the fill to none, and give it a thin stroke. Much better! We’ve nearly got our clean single-stroke engraving font.

Fixing Machine Gothic

Let’s fix the weird lines that connect everything and close the paths. First you’ll want to convert the type to outlines (that’s the “Object to Path” command in Inkscape) and then select the two nodes at each end of the line you want to delete and use the “Delete segment between two non-endpoint nodes” feature to remove the line.

Fixing Machine Gothic

Oh, it’s worth noting that when you convert the type to paths, you lose the ability to edit it as type. More on that later. Here’s the “L” with no extra line connecting everything.

Now, it may look like only certain letters need the extra line deleted, but they all do. Go through each letter to delete the extra lines! If you’re doing a one-off project this may not matter as much, but if we are laser cutting 3,000 pieces, even an extra 5 or 10 seconds per piece will make a huge difference.

Type on a curve

Here’s the real reason I wanted to use an editable typeface rather than the Hershey text extension. With text, you can place it on a path. This means you can curve the text onto a circle or some other shape. We want to make sure we’ve got the text exactly as we want it before removing the extra lines. (Remember that we need to change the editable type into outlines before we remove those extra lines.)

Type on a curve

Don’t forget to remove the circle, or whatever path you used to place your text on.

Type on a curve

Fire up the laser! Here’s our clean and ready to vector-etch single-stroke type.

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I find your use of Comic Sans disturbing.