Spatial awareness

Spotify’s user interface is so well designed, it’s almost impossible to fault it …almost!

I do have one (small) bone to (nit)pick. See the image above? The extra-large, white artist title for “The Soft Pack” is slightly off with it’s letter spacing. It’s a tidy typeface and font, it’s easy to read and clear, but the spacing is off. The tight letter-spacing on the ft of soft looks great, as they blend together where they meet. Yet, the first letter, the captial T does not quite work with the h. They just don’t quite meet, leaving an awkward looking one-pixel space of background between them. I’m being extra picky here, but I would even say that the ever-so-slight ascender on the h next to the cap height of the T is frustrating to look at, as a designer!

Solution…

I would get the UI department to look at this typeface and font further. Perhaps individual kerning is necessary on each Capital letter to ensure they have an appropriate space before each next letter - so that the capital T has a space like the capital S and capital P seem to have. Otherwise, I would simply letter-space out the whole font further. You might lose some nice nuances - like the perfectly touching ft, displayed above - but you will have more space between all letters and therefore should be able to avoid any awkward spaces.

The same goes for the cap heights and ascenders. Either accentuate them further so the ascender stands out higher than the cap height or simply design these to reach exactly the same height, unifying them visually.