2026.9.16
Growing an “Eye for Seeing” Through Letter-Spacing.
mount’s Ongoing Practice in Typography
At mount, we run ongoing in-house training in typography, starting with letter-spacing. It isn't limited to designers — project managers and developers take part too, creating chances for everyone, regardless of role, to sit down with type. In this article, we introduce the practices we’ve kept up so far.
Alongside looking back on each of these practices, we also asked one of our designers about the changes she’s felt along the way.
Contents
1. Letter-Spacing Training
The first thing we did was practice letter-spacing on short pieces of copy. One a day, using Adobe Illustrator, we’d spend five minutes spacing the type and then review it in-house. If there were notes, we’d work on the same copy again the next day.
2. From Short Copy to Long-Form Letter-Spacing
From spacing short copy, the practice expanded into spacing longer passages of text. Everyone works from the same text, typesetting it under a fixed set of conditions. With short copy, we were mostly looking at the space between individual characters — but once it becomes a passage, there’s more to look at. We adjusted everything from how lines held together and where they broke, to how the passage read as a whole.
As the task expanded from letter-spacing to typesetting a whole passage, what we were looking at shifted too — from the space between individual characters to the passage as a whole.
3. Learning Typography From Books
We also each chose a book on typography and shared why we’d picked it and what we felt after reading it. Alongside actually setting type by hand, we built up more input for learning about typography itself.
With the book-picking practice, beyond finding a book yourself, seeing what other members chose became a new entry point of its own. Coming across books you wouldn’t have picked up yourself, or territory you didn’t know about, widened the very range of what learning typography means.
4. Collecting Typography We Think Is “Good”
We also ran a practice where, once a day, each of us would find a piece of typesetting, a layout, or a design where the typography really came alive, and share it along with a short comment.
Not just the type itself, but how type is used within graphics and layout. Beyond the hands-on work of setting type ourselves, this increased how often we ran into all kinds of typography in everyday life. What matters most in this practice is putting into your own words, for whatever design you found, exactly what you thought was good about it.
5. AI-Assisted Letter-Spacing Review
現在は、文字詰めのレビューにも新しい方法を試しています。これまで人が行ってきたレビューやコメントをもとに、文字詰めに対してAIがフィードバックを返す仕組みを開発しています。
We’re currently trying a new approach to letter-spacing review as well. Building on the reviews and comments people have given over the years, we’re developing a system where AI returns feedback on letter-spacing.
By training it on how we’ve reviewed and judged letter-spacing, we’re aiming for a future where practice can continue even without a human reviewer on hand. It’s an effort to turn the feedback we’ve received from people over the years into a system that lets that practice keep going.
Widening the Field of View, Starting From Letter-Spacing
This all started with something as simple as looking at the spacing between characters in short copy. Sticking with it, without fail, day after day, the field of view grew — from the spacing between individual characters, to the balance of the whole string of text, to how it read once set as a passage. From there, it gradually widened further, into looking at how type and graphics come together within an actual design, and how type is placed within a layout.
What began with letter-spacing has grown into typesetting whole passages, learning about typography, and looking at and thinking about good design. We’re currently working, too, on building an AI-assisted review system.
The shape it takes keeps changing, but keeping this up every day hasn’t.
From here, we asked a young designer who has actually kept up this practice about the changes and realizations she’s felt through daily practice, and what comes next.
We Asked a Designer Who’s Actually Done This Work
Members
Speaker
Marin Yamasaki
Des
[Profile]
After graduating high school, she spent three years studying graphic design at a design vocational school, then joined mount as a new graduate. She started out with absolutely no experience in web production.
We also asked one of the designers who has actually kept up the letter-spacing and typography practices introduced here to look back on them — the changes she’s felt through the process, how it connects to her everyday work, and what she wants to keep doing going forward.
— Is there anything from these practices that has particularly stuck with you?
Sticking With Letter-Spacing Changed the Way I See Type
— Letter-spacing is the practice I’ve kept up longest out of all of them. I didn’t have much chance to learn it in school, so first of all, I genuinely feel like I built up the basics.
As I kept at it, I started noticing, even just walking around, things like “the spacing here is uneven” when I saw type out in the city. Before, I think I would have just walked right past it.
Letter-spacing isn’t so much about a wide range of expression, the way layout is — it’s about relentlessly checking whether the type reads cleanly, whether the spacing looks natural as a whole. Doing it again and again changed not just my technical skill at spacing, but the way I see type itself.
Collecting What I “Liked” Showed Me My Own Taste
— Another one that’s stuck with me is the practice of finding and sharing typography.
I’d always had this feeling of “I like this design,” but I never had a clear sense of why I liked it. Looking at a lot of different things, I started paying attention to how type was placed, the white space, the layout — and I came to understand that I’m drawn to typesetting and graphics that are a little precise, a little structured, with room to breathe. Other members, meanwhile, gravitate toward things that are more decorative, or that use more dynamic placement. What people choose ends up showing who they are.
Seeing what other people chose, in turn, made my own taste easier to recognize.
— Does this kind of practice connect to your everyday work?
Especially in the Final Spacing Pass, I Can Work With More Confidence Now
— It’s less that I can point to “this exact spot in this project where it paid off,” and more a sense that my awareness has shifted, little by little. When it comes to letter-spacing, I can now approach that final spacing pass at the end of building a site with a lot more confidence than before.
I Gained One More Lens for Thinking Through Direction
— I’ve also become more conscious of looking at design through a typography lens than I used to be. On top of getting a slightly clearer sense of what I like, seeing so many other people’s examples has, I think, given me a bigger range of options for typesetting and layout to draw on.
I think I’ve gained more angles to think from while I’m working. Going forward, I want to keep looking at a wider range of design and keep building up what I know, and what I can draw on, when it comes to type and layout.
— Is there anything you want to keep doing from here?
Keep Building Up a Store of Things I Think Are “Good”
— Alongside things that have long been considered good, I also want to keep an antenna up for the more adventurous work younger designers are making today, absorb as much of it as I can, and keep stocking up on all kinds of things I find myself thinking “that’s good.” When I’m actually working on a project, I want to be able to reach into that stock and put it to use.
— Is there anything you’d want to tell a designer who’s considering joining mount, or who’s interested in it, about this practice?
Turning Care for Type Into Everyday Training
— I think mount is a company that really values type. Among web production companies, I don’t think there are many places that take type education and training this seriously. It’s a small thing, but in the end it affects the quality of the whole site. Being somewhere that trains you in that is, I think, really valuable.
A website is made up, in large part, of type. There are a lot of moments where information is communicated through text, so I think how you handle type is tied to the quality of the whole site. Apparently, at a company Im worked at before, even the engineers could tell good letter-spacing from bad. It’s not just designers — the people implementing the site are building with both function and beauty in mind, for the whole thing. And type, I think, is one of the elements inside that.
Training your eye for type, and then actually getting to put that to use in real web production — being in an environment like that is, I think, really good for a designer.
* This article used AI to help with the translation.
