Rooftop kerning

It struck me a while back that every time there's any text on any sign, someone had to choose a font and a size for it, among other design choices. (Some things may be mandated by law, but that just means the lawmakers had to make those choices.)

I'm reminded of that again when I see things like this: a set of photos of a bus station in Amsterdam that's currently under construction. The word AMSTERDAM is spelled out in huge letters on the roof, and they're starting from both ends and working in toward the middle. And so the blogger expresses concern that they may not have calculated the sizes of the letters correctly, especially since the evidence so far suggests that the people building the station aren't using consistent kerning.

. . . Speaking of kerning, I don't seem to have mentioned the word keming here. It's a joke word coined by David Friedman in 2008; it's defined as “The result of improper kerning.”

One more thing while I'm here: Google kerning, and look carefully at the letter-spacing of the word kerning in the search results. (May not work in all browsers, I'm not sure.)

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