In typography, spacing between letters is called tracking or letter-spacing. In lettering it is the same idea, with one important difference: there is no font metric to fall back on, because the letters are not characters.
Space tighter than you think
Beginners almost universally leave too much air between letters. There are two reasons. First, a loose setting is easier to draw, because neighbouring outlines never touch and therefore never conflict. Second, loose spacing feels safe — you can see each letter clearly, so it feels correct.
The problem is that air between letters is what makes a word look assembled rather than drawn. Tight spacing is what forces the letters to negotiate with each other, and that negotiation is where the design actually happens.
The working rule: squeeze the letters until they almost touch, then let the outlines settle the gap. The gap should be a decision you made, not the room that happened to be left over.
Optical spacing, not measured spacing
Equal measured gaps between letters look wrong, because different letter shapes have different visual weight. Curves read lighter than straight strokes, and open shapes read lighter than closed ones.
- Two straight stems, as in H and I, can sit very close — the gap holds because both edges are flat.
- A curve next to a straight stroke, as in O and I, needs more room. A round edge visually retreats from its own bounding box.
- Two curves, as in O and C, need the most room of all, even though they look on paper like they should nest.
- Diagonals are the awkward case. A and V can be pushed until the sloping strokes nearly meet, but only if their terminals are flat rather than pointed.
Spacing changes with style
| Style | Typical spacing | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Blockbuster | Very tight, letters nearly touching | Designed for distance legibility — the word needs to read as one silhouette |
| Throw-up | Tight, often with a shared outline | The whole word is drawn as a single shape |
| Bubble | Moderate to tight | Counters need room to stay open, but gaps between letters should stay small |
| Handstyle | Variable | Handwriting has no fixed spacing; the spacing is part of the rhythm |
| Wildstyle | Irrelevant in the usual sense | Letters interlock and share strokes, so the question is where they overlap, not how far apart they sit |
How to check a word is set correctly
- Squint at it. If the word reads as one object rather than a row of shapes, the spacing is working.
- Look at the gaps as shapes in their own right. If any gap is noticeably bigger or smaller than the others, it will read as a mistake.
- Turn the piece upside down. Reversing it defeats your expectations about the letters and makes uneven spacing much easier to see.
- Compare the gap between the first two letters with the gap between the last two. Beginners are usually tighter at the start and looser at the end.
One more thing worth knowing: the space between letters and the space around the whole word are related. A word set tightly with generous margins reads as deliberate. The same word filling its frame edge to edge reads as cramped, even though the spacing is identical.
Adjust spacing on your own word
Changing spacing in the generator
The tracking control changes letter spacing across the whole word, and the letter size control scales the letters within the frame. The two interact: a word set tightly and scaled down will look loose again, so it is worth setting the size first and the spacing second.
The generator also spaces letters using the actual ink bounds of each glyph rather than the font’s advance width. That matters more than it sounds — several handstyle typefaces have glyphs that overhang their own advance width, and a naive layout makes them overlap.
Questions
Why does my graffiti word look like separate letters?
Because the spacing is too loose. Air between letters makes a word read as a row of shapes rather than one piece. Set the letters so they nearly touch and let the outlines settle the gap.
Should letter spacing be equal between every pair of letters?
No. Optical spacing beats measured spacing, because curves read lighter than straight strokes. Pairs involving round letters need more room than pairs of flat strokes, even though that seems backwards.