Building a Spacing Calculator

While casually streaming type design live on Twitch, I finally came to the formidable pass—spacing. In an effort to remain transparent with viewers, I quickly informed them that my type designs had never gotten that far, and as such, I had no resources to guide me along. Uh-oh. Turning to the heaven-sent "Designing Type," by Karen Cheng, I found only three pages (and worse, only ONE small table) about spacing, which was one step removed from Walter Tracy's, "Letters of Credit: A View of Type Design." It seemed a romantic view of drawing letterforms transcended my own inoculation and struck others as well. Without type school, what was I to do? Fortunately, I know how to study, I know how to research, and perhaps most importantly, I know how to construct a powerful spreadsheet. So I built it—I built a calculator that tells me exactly how to space my fonts. I'll show you how I built it, the roaring tragedies along the way, and the beautiful results.