Should sidebearings be adjusted across multiple weights?

Design
1

Hello Community,

Suppose I have two masters: Regular and Bold. In the Regular master, the glyph H has LSB/RSB = 50/50.

Now, while designing the Bold master of H, I increase the thickness of the outer vertical stems by 10 units on each side. As a result, the effective sidebearings become 40/40.

In this case, should I adjust the Bold sidebearings back to 50/50 to maintain the same visual spacing across both masters? Or is it normal for different weights to have different sidebearing values, for example, larger LSB/RSB values for Regular and smaller values for Bold?

In other words, when designing multiple weights, should the numeric sidebearing values remain consistent across all masters, or should they be adjusted to achieve consistent optical spacing?

2

The short answer is no. The sidebearings of different weights have their own logic. In general, the sidebearings of heavier weights are less than the normal weight. A rule of thumb as a starting point is to make the sum of the left and right sidebearings of a cap H of each weight a tad less than the counterspace of that H. Each glyph category and group has its own best distance. V and W, quite a bit smaller; Os and other rounds, in between. The eye is the final arbiter. This is a skill that takes some practice.

There must be a spacing tutorial on this site to give you better guidance.

Start with this:

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