Custom Wedding Invitation Design: Kerning

Do you know what an experienced graphic designer may do to make a wedding invitation look expensive, luxurious, and modern? Kerning! Among other “tricks” graphic designers know, kerning is a HUGE game changer when it comes to professional, polished looking wedding invitations. The definition of kerning is the spacing between letters or characters in a piece of text to be printed.

The above image shows a design I typed up without changing the kerning or doing anything else to the fonts. If you examine closely, you will see that the plain “sans serif” font is very tight from one letter to the next. This can make it hard to read, and also does not print as well for letterpress printing.

Furthermore, the calligraphy script font has some letters that are harder to read. Examin the “e” and “a” letters. The inside of the letters, which is called counterform, is very small. Also, some of the capital letters are much bigger in comparison to the others (check out the “G” and “E”

The above image shows how I changed the design. I expanded the kerning so that the sans serif font has more room to “breathe” and is therefore easier on the eye to read. I also dissected the calligraphy script font and opened up some the letters (see the “a” and “e” difference). I made two of the capital letters smaller.

Small design changes like this can make a big impact. In my opinion, the wedding invitation design I edited looks more modern and expensive.

An experienced and well educated graphic designer will easily see and make these small changes for your wedding invitations.

I hope this information helps you in your wedding invitation pursuit!