Archives for February 2014

Importance of Kerning and Tracking

February 18, 2014 by Mark Mapp 6 Comments

Some Background

When designing a project for digital or print, there are a couple of important aspects in design which must be taken into consideration. These important aspects to remember in design are namely kerning and tracking, known to most people simply as letter spacing. So what do these terms mean? Do they really make such a big difference in design? And how do we tell them apart?

We will start by defining these two design terms. Kerning by definition simply means to adjust the spacing between a letter pairing. Throughout history, characters of the alphabet were never designed with any type of letter spacing in mind; therefore, some letter combinations would appear awkward without applying any type of spacing to them. Presently, a designer can accomplish this process through the use of various page layout programs such as, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, and Quark Express . In most page layout programs, a designer can choose to apply two types of kerning options, namely auto kerning or manual kerning.

Auto Kerning

Automatic kerning refers to the kerning applied automatically by a program, as opposed to no kerning at all or the kerning applied manually by the user. There are two types of automatic kerning, namely metric and optical.

Metric kerning utilizes the kerning tables that are built into the typeface. When you select metric kerning in your page layout program, you are using the spacing that was intended by the designer of the typeface. Metric kerning usually looks good, especially at small sizes. Cheap novelty fonts or free fonts often have little or no built-in kerning and will need to be optically or manually kerned.
Unlike metric kerning, optical kerning uses the shapes of letters to determine what spacing is adequate between a pair of letters rather than a kerning table that is built into the typeface. There is some level of control with optical kerning, but this option will not space letters as accurately in comparison to kerning them manually. However, optical kerning can be a great option when mixing and matching different fonts.

Manual Kerning

The final kerning option is manual kerning. This is considered by many to be the preferred option for most designers and typographers. When kerning type manually, the designer’s eye is what determines the letter spacing between letter parings. This process can be very time-consuming and should only be used to kern large, display-style type.

Tracking

While kerning refers to adjusting the spacing between letter pairs, tracking refers to the overall letter spacing in a selection of letters. This can be a word, a sentence, a paragraph, or an entire document. When applying tracking values, the spacing throughout the text will be equal.

As a rule, designers should adjust the tracking to a body of text before applying any kerning value. If you kern your text first and then apply your tracking values, you will negate the kerning values that were previously applied.

What Designers Need to Keep in Mind

Now that we have discussed and defined the differences between kerning and tracking in design, the following are some things to remember when manipulating text’s kerning and tracking:

Always start with the difficult pairings, like capital/lowercase pairings, diagonal letters (like X, V, and Z) and round letters (like O, B, and D).
Adjust kerning values as a last step in your design, especially after you choose a font. Remember every font is different.
Try kerning your text upside down. Kerning text upside down can help to focus on letter pairings rather than the entire word..
The goal of kerning is for the type to appear optically correct. There is no secret formula to this process, and often times it just takes practice.
Here is a game to test your kerning your skills.

Do you have any kerning or tracking tip to add to this list? Let us know in the comments!

DaBrian Marketing Group Chosen to Redesign Local Law Firm’s Website

February 14, 2014 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

A West Lawn, PA-based law firm has chosen DaBrian Marketing Group, LLC to lead in the development, implementation, and configuration of its website redesign project.

Reading, PA – February 13, 2013 – Miller Law Group, PLLC, a law firm located in West Lawn, PA, has chosen Reading, PA-based DaBrian Marketing Group, LLC, a full service digital marketing agency, to redesign the firm’s website.

With experience spanning over 40 years, Miller Law Group, PLLC has built a reputation of providing clients with devoted, passionate, and professional legal service. Where other law firms may concentrate solely on a rapid legal resolution, Miller Law Group chose to differentiate itself by forming a personal connection with each person or business it represents. In support of the firm’s mission, Miller Law Group’s founding partners resolved to focus on marketing themselves in lieu of doing so with the overall brand.

“The Miller Law Group has grown tremendously over the last 13 years based upon our individual reputations as lawyers. However, as we have now begun to expand the firm and offer the same personalized service throughout multiple attorneys, it became apparent that we needed to market our extremely reputable brand itself, to get across the message that we now have a full firm offering the same excellent services,” said Larry Miller Jr., Esq., managing partner of Miller Law Group, PLLC. “DaBrian Marketing Group has been instrumental in getting that message across, and we are excited to be working with this innovative company.”

Through initial discussions, it became clear that the firm’s brand must be able to stand on its own in order to make any progress from a marketing standpoint. With that in mind, DaBrian Marketing Group designed, developed, and programmed an all-new website built upon the flexible, open-source WordPress content management system. Throughout the process, DaBrian Marketing Group adhered not only to the most current web design best practices, but also considered Miller Law Group’s digital brand identity.

“Making the transition from primarily traditional marketing to digital often poses many challenges,” said Daniel Laws, principal of DaBrian Marketing Group. “For Miller Law Group, we worked to create a website design and write page content that reinforced key branding components and, at the same time, supported the traditional marketing efforts that the firm conducted in the past.”

The new Miller Law Group, PLLC website can be found at millerlawgroup.net. You can also check out our past design work in our new portfolio!

No SEO or New SEO?

February 5, 2014 by Dabrian Marketing Group 1 Comment

Is SEO No More?

Google’s Hummingbird algorithm update has created quite a stir in the realm of SEO. Some have even gone as far as to say that SEO is dead. In reality, SEO is far from being “dead”, in fact, SEO has changed quite drastically. Google and other major search engines are shifting away from isolated keyword-centric relevancy and run-of-the-mill directory submissions and are focusing on broader keyword categories as well as quality, shareable, and relevant content.

Relevancy of Keywords

With the recent algorithm change, many have questioned whether keywords still matter in the process of SEO. Keywords are still a significant part of the overall SEO process; however, search engines will not be looking for them in isolation.

When we mention keywords, the idea of a specific search-term may come to mind. With the implementation of Hummingbird and the other algorithm changes, the idea of keywords encompasses a broader category. Keyword qualifiers are an important aspect to consider when researching keywords. Qualifiers refer to the words in a keyword phrase that specify time, quality, location, and user intent. Though you want to keep a general category in for keywords, qualifiers will be important in more specific landing pages. For example, if you’re operating an online store for shoes, searchers will most likely be looking to research/purchase a specific product and will use query a specific term, such as, “buy canvas shoes.”

Are Content and Linking all That Matter?

As mentioned earlier, content is king of the SEO and digital marketing realm. Is this all you have to do? Just create content and share it? Even though this is a keystone of the new SEO strategy, it’s not an “end-all-be-all” solution. Though the SEO process is changing drastically, it’s still a complex machine that requires several working parts to produce results.

Long gone are the days of simply just submitting URLs to directories. Linking now focuses on creating unique and shareable content and disseminating it through reliable sources. Rather than thinking of this process as link building, it should be thought of as link earning. Links can be earned through sharing unique content that provides value to the reader, such as how-to-guides and infographics (ensure that they are relevant to your topic).

Conclusion

Despite the SEO world being shaken, it is here to stay. The entire SEO process still maintains traditional elements such as keywords, linking, etc., but they must be looked at from an updated viewpoint. Keywords must be imagined in broad categories that can encompass a variety of keywords rather than one specific term. Link earning strategies should focus on creating unique and shareable content that provides value to the reader and that is disseminated to reliable, trustworthy sites. With these parts in play, you’ll be able to produce a workable SEO plan for the updated digital space.