A Beginners Guide To Kerning in Design Space

Have you ever looked at a word or sentence in your design and something looked "off?" Kerning may be the culprit! Let's discuss what kerning is, and how to kern words in Design Space.

What Is Kerning?

Kerning is the process of adjusting the spacing between two letters to avoid awkward spacing and improve legibility. In the example below, you will see the difference in the word Kerning:

In the image above, you will see gaps in between some letters and no gaps in between others. The image below shows uniformed spacing, with each letter touching the one in front. Script fonts are a good example of a font that needs to be kerned in order to read as cursive was intended to. Kerning is also important to increase and improve the readability of text on a project.

Before Cricut rolled out with the new update that included kerned fonts, we had to ungroup each word, and then manually slide letter by letter over until the word looked correct. This was extremely time-consuming, especially when you were working with paragraphs or quotes on a larger project.

Most fonts are now available kerned properly together, however, there are a few that you will need to manually update. Also be sure to keep an eye out on certain letters that create extra spacing between letters such as: A, K V W Y, F L T.

How To Find Kerned Fonts In Design Space

Let's take a look at Design Spaces' new feature, Kerned Fonts. Open up Design Space to get started. (The new update is currently available to PC or MAC users only. If you are using any other device, you will need to manually adjust each word.)

1. Click on the text tool and then pull down the font menu.
2. Select the box in the top right corner that says "Only Kerned Fonts". This will allow you to view fonts on your device that Design Space is able to kern automatically for you.

If you can no longer find a specific font, it may have been hidden when you checked "Only Kerned Fonts". Uncheck that box and they all should reappear.

You will need to manually adjust spacing on fonts not shown in "Only Kerned Fonts." If you need help manually adjusting kerning, check out this post in our Design School for step by step instructions on how to do that.

How to Manually Adjust Kerning In Cricut Design Space

Thanks to Design Space, kerning has gotten a whole lot easier. Let us know below if you found this helpful. What are some tips and tricks you would like to learn about next? Tell us below in the comments.