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SERIFA
Participant
January 26, 2024
Answered

Feature Request: AI-Assisted Kerning for Improved Typography

  • January 26, 2024
  • 3 replies
  • 1150 views

Hi,

 

It would be extremely helpful if one could set a font not only to metric and optical settings but also to AI. An AI that optimally balances character spacing would be very helpful, for example, in logo lettering.

 

Best,

C

Correct answer Abhishek Rao

Hi ​@aminvahedi,

 

Thank you for sharing your feedback and for explaining how this would benefit your workflow, especially for Persian and Arabic typography. We understand why having an AI-assisted kerning option could be valuable where the current Optical kerning may not always produce the desired results.

While InDesign doesn't currently offer an AI-based kerning feature, we'd love for this idea to be submitted to our InDesign UserVoice so it can be reviewed and prioritized by the product team. You can create a feature request here: https://indesign.uservoice.com/forums/601021-adobe-indesign-feature-requests.

Once you've created the UserVoice, please share the link here in this thread so other community members can upvote it as well. The more support a request receives, the better it helps the team understand its impact and prioritize future improvements. You'll also be notified directly of any updates on your request.

We appreciate your feedback, and we're always happy to help if you have any other questions.

Abhishek

3 replies

graphics_4075
Inspiring
July 21, 2026

I would much rather have improvements to user-inputted kerning first, since those are still missing… There is no way to set document-wide rules for kerning between certain letter pairings; essentially “kerning styles”, or anything like the sort. 

 

I personally can’t imagine this being a very useful tool (maybe for the inexperienced.) It would still need user review after since the very point of kerning is intent. I have found that many of Adobe’s AI features do things I did NOT intend more often than not (sometimes without me even knowing ;)) Kerning can be a document wide thing too so I just view this idea with hesitancy and welcome long-needed, user-controlled kerning improvements before the addition of AI ones.

Cheers
Participant
July 21, 2026

I actually thought your idea was really good. I’ve also been looking for a way to optimize kerning using AI. In my opinion, there would be a few advantages to this:
– When Adobe software is used by people without technical expertise, at least the larger headlines would look better and feel more pleasing—provided the AI ​​is trained accordingly.
– For certain languages ​​like Persian and Arabic, the "Optical" setting doesn't even work properly, necessitating manual adjustments by humans; an automated AI kerning mode could be helpful in this context as well.

Abhishek Rao
Community Manager
Abhishek RaoCommunity ManagerCorrect answer
Community Manager
July 21, 2026

Hi ​@aminvahedi,

 

Thank you for sharing your feedback and for explaining how this would benefit your workflow, especially for Persian and Arabic typography. We understand why having an AI-assisted kerning option could be valuable where the current Optical kerning may not always produce the desired results.

While InDesign doesn't currently offer an AI-based kerning feature, we'd love for this idea to be submitted to our InDesign UserVoice so it can be reviewed and prioritized by the product team. You can create a feature request here: https://indesign.uservoice.com/forums/601021-adobe-indesign-feature-requests.

Once you've created the UserVoice, please share the link here in this thread so other community members can upvote it as well. The more support a request receives, the better it helps the team understand its impact and prioritize future improvements. You'll also be notified directly of any updates on your request.

We appreciate your feedback, and we're always happy to help if you have any other questions.

Abhishek

Mike Witherell
Community Expert
Community Expert
January 26, 2024

That is essentially what Optical attempts to do. But it still needs your input: On big lettering, the subtle spacing decision is still the practice of Authentic Intelligence© from a human artistic judgment.

Mike Witherell
SERIFA
SERIFAAuthor
Participant
January 26, 2024

Hi Mike,

 

Indeed, Optical kerning aims to address spacing issues, and human artistic judgment remains vital, especially in large lettering. Integrating AI in typography to augment these human decisions for tasks like logo design or text formatting. An example from 2017 illustrates this potential: Simon Cozens trained a neural network to kern a font, using well-kerned fonts for training. The network could classify kern pairs with high accuracy, demonstrating AI's capability in understanding kerning principles, although further development was needed. This project highlights AI's potential in typography as a complement to human creativity and precision.

 

Best,

C

 

For more details on Simon Cozens' project, you can check out the discussion on TypeDrawers: I trained a neural network to kern a font (mostly).