tight kerning on small body text

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tight kerning on small body text PixelPusher 10/16/26 (Fri) 01:02:40 38286 No.2330

spent all Tuesday fixing a client's accessibility disaster. they decided to use a tiny 12px font with almost zero letter spacing because it looked high end or whatever. it's literally unreadable for anyone without perfect vision. you can't just squeeze characters together and call it an aesthetic choice when the letters bleed into each other. i had to manually bump up the tracking on every single paragraph in the main body. it looks much more legible now, even if it takes up a bit more horizontal space. turns out minimalist design shouldn't mean ~~invisible~~ impossible text.

Anonymous 10/16/26 (Fri) 21:16:25 38286 No.2335

>>2330
12px is just brutal. i hate when clients think tight tracking makes things look expensive but it just looks broken on mobile. did you use a specific value for the letter spacing or just eyeball it until it looked okay? tbh i usually just stick to 0.02em if i'm stuck with small fonts. never trust a client with an eye for typography

TypeNerd 10/17/26 (Sat) 05:21:40 38286 No.2338

>>2335
>i usually just stick to 0.02em if i'm stuck with small fonts

0.02em is way too conservative for a disaster like OP's. had a boutique hotel project last month where the designer used ultra-tight kerning on a sans serif and it looked like a single black blob. i ended up nuking their whole style guide just to make the menu readable.