KernType – A Kerning Game

http://type.method.ac/#

by kristianc • 7 years ago

134 36 7 years ago

type.method.ac

Pretty fun. Very easy, but fun nonetheless.

kccqzy• 7 years ago

Nice game. But I find it frustrating not to be able to drag the last character. My experience is that well-kerned text takes up overall less horizontal space than unkerned text (i.e. most kerning adjustments are negative), so I'm not sure why this game doesn't allow me to change that overall width.

wyattpeak• 7 years ago

It might just be an accommodation for people who know little about typography.

I couldn't have done it if I'd been able to adjust the overall length because I had no intuition about how close the characters should have been in the various fonts, I took my cue from the total width.

n3k5• 7 years ago

Consider that you're not starting from 'no kerning', but from deliberately bad kerning.

The overall width is a given because it tells you the tracking (letter-spacing) you're aiming for. It's common for this parameter to be user-selectable even when kerning is completely automatic (or to be automatically adjusted for the purpose of justification), so when you are the kerning algorithm, it's not your job to question that choice.

I can see how this can seem weird, as nominally you are responsible for deciding the overall width. But if you had to try to continue the tracking between the first two glyphs instead, or aim for e.g. "+20%", it would be much more difficult.

Being able to continuously deal with the feeling of "they want me to do WHAT!?" is one of the skills that distinguishes pro graphic designers from amateurs ;)

pfdietz• 7 years ago

Should have been called Kemtype

maxfan8• 7 years ago

Nice pun!

ozzmotik• 7 years ago

this is a nice keming machine

seanmcdirmid• 7 years ago

When I started using the internet, I would read pom as porn given the horrible font and terminal I was using. It made for some really awkward misunderstandings.

userbinator• 7 years ago

Google ReCAPTCHA, back when it was about OCR'ing books, has apparently made that mistake with pom.xml --- no surprise, I bet 99% of people who saw a CAPTCHA saying "pom" thought it said "porn".

clarry• 7 years ago

I've had similar isseus with some sans-serif fonts and uppercase letters joining together to form another letter. This might not be the best example but you get the idea... https://i.imgur.com/v2A3m4z.png

_bxg12• 7 years ago

Doesn't work in mobile Safari

kstrauser3• 7 years ago

It works great on iPad.

cbsks• 7 years ago

I’m on mobile safari as well. I can drag the letters, but I can’t click the “compare” burton.

_bxg12• 7 years ago

I can't even drag the letters, or for that matter zoom out to see the cut off text below them

glandium• 7 years ago

Because of the twitter link.

soperj• 7 years ago

That's because Apple doesn't keep their shit up to date.

mattlondon• 7 years ago

Doesn't work on Android Brave (Chromium 79) browser either.

If you try to drag, the whole page scrolls instead.

bshacklett• 7 years ago

No luck for me on Chrome on a Pixel3a, either. I can select a character, but I can't move it.

keyle• 7 years ago

Wow after all the bad kerning jokes I can't believe I didn't think of this. So well executed too, very addictive :)

Could 'juice'* it a little

(*) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fy0aCDmgnxg

ASTP001• 7 years ago

Great concept, fun game. Wish it was more mobile friendly.

alpb• 7 years ago

Bazillionth time it’s posted and discussed. https://hn.algolia.com/?q=type.method.ac Not sure how HN even allows it.

dang• 7 years ago

Reposts on HN are fine if a story hasn't had significant attention in the last year or so. This has been the practice for many years here.

RandallBrown2• 7 years ago

It's actually only the 6th time it's been discussed. Every other time it got 0 comments.

The most recent time it got any sort of traction was 4 years ago.

Seems reasonable for HN to allow that.

sandov• 7 years ago

How had I not seen this before?

kstrauser3• 7 years ago

Your periodic reminder that bad kerning distracted Donald Knuth from TAOCP for a decade or so, setting our industry back countless person-millennia. Do not trifle with kerning. It’s a different kind of Turing tarpit for software engineers.

CrazyStat• 7 years ago

But how many person-millennia has it saved for all the people who don't need to be distracted by bad kerning now?

kstrauser3• 7 years ago

That's an excellent point. It sure beats having 1,000 smart people each spending 20 years independently solving the same problem.

lilyball• 7 years ago

I only did 2 words. The first word I almost perfectly nailed it. Only got 80/100. Second word I was further off, got 88/100. I don't understand the scoring.

fourthark• 7 years ago

I think the scoring depends too much on word length. I consistently did better on longer words.

aasasd• 7 years ago

Note that the site hosts a few other such games, which are all cool: https://method.ac

tiborsaas• 7 years ago

It's a good idea to complete it at least 1 time / year. Wish it had more challenges.

duopixel• 7 years ago

Author here. I’ve been meaning to release a second version of the game, will probably tackle it in 2020 (this game is around eight years old and needs a complete rewrite to work on mobile)

jraph• 7 years ago

It works on Firefox Mobile on Android. However, one has to switch from landscape to portrait mode back and forth to kern, and then to click on the next button.

stared• 7 years ago

Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1015/

smexy• 7 years ago

There's always a relevant xkcd...

MattRix• 7 years ago

Not working at all in Chrome on my Pixel 2

KernType – A Kerning Game

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