On a 24x36 poster with a 0.125" bleed this morning, a client told me to “make the letters touch more loudly” and then insisted the 6pt footnotes (Pantone 185 C) would be fine because “the printer can enlarge the ink.” What’s your favorite typographic request that made you stare at the leading panel in InDesign?
“make the letters touch more loudly” — I send a 100% crop test strip (headline + 6pt note in 185 C) and have them print it; watching the footnote vanish gets approval to bump to 8/11 and use -10 tracking instead of letter-smash… Want the test-strip PDF?
I counter the “printer can enlarge the ink” with a quick Separations Preview — 6pt in Pantone 185 C turns to fuzz long before press. For the loud-touching letters, I switch to Optical kerning, nudge tracking to about -20, and use 98–100% glyph scaling so it feels tighter without collisions. If black footnotes are off-brand, I push for 8/10 in 185 C or ask which gives: size or color.
Optical kerning with -15 tracking makes headlines ‘louder.’ 6pt 185 C? Go 7+ or 100K, @OP.
My quick fix when they want it “louder” is to step the headline up a weight rather than squeeze the pairs, . For that 6pt note in 185 C on a 24x36 with a 0.125" bleed, I open the PDF in Acrobat’s Output Preview and turn on Simulate Overprint to show how fine red type drops at size; handy ref: https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/previewing-output-pdfs.html. If they won’t budge on size, @OP, try a heavier cut for the footnote or a slightly darker spot so it survives — what stock are you on?
I once got “can you bold the kerning?” on a 24×36 with a 0.125" bleed — . For “make the letters touch more loudly,” I swap to the condensed cut of the same family and leave kerning at Metrics; for that tiny Pantone 185 footnote I tape up a 100% tiled laser proof so they can see it fall apart at arm’s length — works every time, @OP.
When I get “make the letters touch more loudly,” I swap the headline to the family’s Display cut so it reads louder at size without crushing the pairs; caveat: I still hand‑kern the odd VA/To. @nicadam, do you ever proof on the actual stock to kill the “printer can enlarge the ink” myth?
, the “enlarge the ink” line gets me every time. On a 24×36, I’d bump those 6pt 185 C notes to 7/9 and swap to 187 C or just K so they survive dot gain, then set the headline to Optical kerning and give it a 0.1 pt same‑color stroke to read “louder” without crushing pairs — just watch registration. Have you tried the family’s optical size in InDesign, or is the client married to that exact weight?
, for ‘printer can enlarge the ink’ I just toggle InDesign’s Overprint Preview and then show a quick laser proof — 6pt in 185 C evaporates, so I bump to 8/10 and nudge the red toward a darker mix if they won’t accept K. For ‘make the letters touch more loudly,’ I’ll try slight negative tracking plus a hair of contextual alternates, but I keep Optical kerning on and stop the moment counters start filling — caps or a weight up is my backup. @lcarter ever tried variable fonts’ opsz axis here to get the volume without smashing pairs?