Tracking

The even spacing added across a run of letters. Loosen it for calm and distance; tighten it and the words begin to clench.

Tracking spaces a whole run of letters evenly, where kerning argues pair by pair. Opened up, it reads as distance and formality; pulled tight, as urgency. Small caps and uppercase need extra tracking to breathe, because capitals were never meant to stand shoulder to shoulder.

The uppercase labels on these pages carry deliberate air between letters for exactly that reason. The failure mode is tracking lowercase wide to fill space: lowercase depends on snug fit to form word shapes, and loosening it dissolves words into alphabet. Track caps generously, lowercase almost never.