Show HN: KernType, a typography game made with Raphaël • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: KernType, a typography game made with Raphaël

#31

Post by alphakappa » Sat, Oct 08, 2011, 2:09 AM UTC

This is lovely. Could you randomize the order in which you present the words so that I don't have to go through the same word list every time I visit the website?

Also, could you add a few different levels of difficulty using more letters and tougher fonts?

Once again, this is nice.

Re: Show HN: KernType, a typography game made with Raphaël

#32

Post by leot » Sat, Oct 08, 2011, 2:13 AM UTC

I think you need to take the absolute value of the error, rather than the simple sum of negative and positive. I keep getting 100 when I'm slightly off in two directions.

Re: Show HN: KernType, a typography game made with Raphaël

#33

Post by callahad » Sat, Oct 08, 2011, 2:45 AM UTC

Just hit 100/100 on screen 3, "holly," in... wait, how do I find out what typeface it is after kerning?

Re: Show HN: KernType, a typography game made with Raphaël

#34

Post by malkia » Sat, Oct 08, 2011, 2:51 AM UTC

77/100 :)

Re: Show HN: KernType, a typography game made with Raphaël

#35

Post by yariang » Sat, Oct 08, 2011, 3:01 AM UTC

A thought, it would be great if it could explain what mistakes you made. Knowing I got a 0/100 is great but I'd really like to know why :) That would turn it from leaning through trial and error into a very useful learning tool.

Re: Show HN: KernType, a typography game made with Raphaël

#36

Post by Adaptive » Sat, Oct 08, 2011, 3:12 AM UTC

Brilliant and fun. All those years of hand kerning type pays off, finally.

Re: Show HN: KernType, a typography game made with Raphaël

#37

Post by wavephorm » Sat, Oct 08, 2011, 3:19 AM UTC

As a developer, this seems like something that should be handled automatically by a typeface.

Re: Show HN: KernType, a typography game made with Raphaël

#38

Post by duopixel » Sat, Oct 08, 2011, 3:29 AM UTC

JoshTriplett wrote: post #22

I tried this a couple of times, but the first and last letters seem so far apart that this becomes less about "make it look good" and more about "make it look less terrible". I can make the letters look great together with the first letter, which results in nearly a full letter's worth of space between the penultimate letter and the last. Perhaps this just represents an artifact of drawing the font extra-huge, but th…

People often track too tight because it looks good when it's large type at a close distance. However, this is absolutely terrible for legibility in real life conditions where you either look at small type from close or large type from far away.

Re: Show HN: KernType, a typography game made with Raphaël

#39

Post by duopixel » Sat, Oct 08, 2011, 3:34 AM UTC

bprater wrote: post #21

Uses same shortcuts as Photoshop -- so if you are a hard-core kerner in Photoshop, try out the same keys. Pretty slick!

Thanks for noticing! I put a pretty large effort on making it completely usable without touching the mouse. Safari (but not Chrome) has some gotchas that make it a real pain to work around.

Re: Show HN: KernType, a typography game made with Raphaël

#40

Post by Adaptive » Sat, Oct 08, 2011, 3:38 AM UTC

JoshTriplett wrote: post #22

I tried this a couple of times, but the first and last letters seem so far apart that this becomes less about "make it look good" and more about "make it look less terrible". I can make the letters look great together with the first letter, which results in nearly a full letter's worth of space between the penultimate letter and the last. Perhaps this just represents an artifact of drawing the font extra-huge, but th…

Good kerning can be done with tight and loose letter grouping. I much prefer the loose tracking here as it give much greater precision to the final submission.