The Blender: How to Speak Design: Kerning and Tracking

If you’ve created a logo or placed a print advertisement, chances are you’ve heard the terms kerning and tracking. In this segment of How to Speak Design, we’re covering the difference between the two graphic design terms.

Tracking indicates adjustments to the density of a body of text, uniformly increasing and decreasing the amount of space between letters and words. Tracking can make a word like “orange” change to “o r a n g e” with a little finessing. Kerning is where the finesse comes in, strategically adjusting the space between specific letters to achieve balance and the proper aesthetic. For example, the word “orange” may look like “or ange” or “orang e” when different forms of kerning are applied.