Spacing used in Visiting Cards

Once you selected the software, size of the visiting card and the font, you start typing the matter. Now spacing comes in a picture. Spacing can be the distance between the characters as well as the distance between the two consecutive lines that is called Leading in the technical term.

In the software like PageMaker. they have used the term called Tracking where the distance between character is adjusted with respect to predefined options. These options are Tight, Very Tight, Loose, Very Loose etc.

Kerning also deals with spacing, which is again the adjustment of the distance between the characters using keys.

When you need to adjust the spacing?
Let us understand this using the following word.

The above word is typed using Arial font and you may not need to adjust spacing with this as it is readable. We will use same word with different font.

The same word is now typed with thick and tight font where the distance between the character is less. This may happen with thin script font which is tight by default. Here you may want to loose the characters and increase the distance between them.

As shown in the above figure, we have increased the distance between the characters.

If you want to use the same Arial font and accommodate in the less space you can tight the characters by reducing the distance but you need to take care of not making it too tight else it may not look proper as well as will become difficult to read. In the following figure, we have reduced the distance between the characters.

The problem of accommodating more text in the less space using the same font can be handled differently if you have more options available in terms of fonts. You can use different type from the same family. i.e. you can use Arial Narrow in the place of Arial Normal to accommodate more text in the less area, as we have done in the following figure.

After adjusting the distance between the characters, you may need to adjust the distance between the two consecutive line to accommodate the text in the available vertical space. This is called Leading in the technical language. Let us understand this with example.

This is the default leading text typed with no adjustments. Let us decrease the distance between the lines to accommodate the text in the less space.

Generally you don't need to increase the distance between the lines but if it require in rare case, it can be done.