Whenever words are typed out in any design software package, the program ‘guesses’ how close the letters should be to eachother. This is known as Kerning (or more accurately in this case – ‘auto’ Kerning). Alas, these are only estimates and some programs do it better than others (Microsoft Word = though not a design program, is the worst, Adobe Illustrator is better though not perfect) and what looks good on your monitor will look hideous when enlarged to billboard size. The only way to effectively space typography is by ‘eyeball’ and by hand. Some letter combinations – V & A for example – require tighter spacing than say, M & N. Setting up correctly spaced typography is critical – poorly spaced letters will register in the viewer’s minds eye as an amateur-hour logo, even if they can’t quite put their finger on what’s wrong. And yes, this also includes the ‘tag line’ of your design. These are the group of words, usually small, under the logo that invariably describes what the featured company does, or how good they are at doing it. I’ve seen taglines with default kerning through which you could drive a Mack Truck. And while we’re talking about fonts and logos, for the love of gawd, if you’re going to use off-the-shelf fonts (perfectly acceptable) there are certain type faces that were never meant to be used as display. Chauncery Script is one (shudder). Papyrus was cool (about six thousand logos ago). And oh yeah – a logo (and tagline) with anything more than two font styles risks imitating a ransom note…
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