Collision kerning?

[dantaylr (Dan Taylor)]

Hey there. I’m building a display typeface that is commonly used with tight kerning that focuses on a uniform amount of space between the letters.

Given this, the way I am approaching kerning involves reducing the side bearings to 0 and then visually colliding the letters for each kerning pair. I’m curious if anyone has ever automated a collision-based kerning process. I realize it doesn’t work with every letter combo but automating this would be wonderful!

(Ignore the destroyed Q)

[dantaylr (Dan Taylor)]

Here’s an example of how I use this. After doing the collision-based kerning I would add side bearings back in.

[SCarewe (Sebastian Carewe)]

There’s the mekkablue script KernCrasher that will find colliding pairs, but from what I understand, you’re looking for the opposite.

You could try out Toshi’s BubbleKern, maybe that could work.

[mekkablue (Rainer Erich Scheichelbauer)]

Try AutoBumper.

The situation between an and d does not appear to be collision based but bbox based.