I have been in Baghdad for approximately three months, and while traveling around, I have noticed several businesses, including universities, using the word “BAGHDAD.”

Most businesses write BAGHDAD in serif fonts almost always using Times New Roman, and up to now, I noticed they all have left the word to the automatic kerning as set by the program.

The issue with the unkerned BAGHDAD is that the letters “GHD” look tighter, which makes the loose ones, in this case, the letters BA and AD stick out.

Visually, it splits the word BAGHDAD into three parts, BA, GHD, and AD.BA and AD being the loose parts, and BHD being the tighter part.

Usually, kerning values are negative numbers, meaning that the characters in question should have the space between them reduced. But in this case, some of the values are positive pushing certain pairs of characters further apart.

Starting with the letter B, the kern is set to a negative value to reduce the white space the top of the letter A creates and to pull the hairline of the letter A, closer to the bowl of the letter B. The kerning of the letter B is set to -65.

The kern of the letter A is also set to a negative value to allow pulling the bowl of the letter G closer to the serif of the letter A. The kerning of the letter A is set to -50.

The letter G has a positive kern to create a white space next to the letter H. The kerning of the letter G is set to 10.

The letter H has the largest value of positive kerning to avoid a ligature with the serif of the letter D. The positive kern provides harmony between the rest of the letters. The kerning of the letter H is set to 55.

The letter D has an equal negative kerning to the letter B since both letters need to pull the hairline of the letter A closer to their bowls. The kerning of the letter D is set to -65.

Lastly, the letter A is designed with a positive kerning to avoid a ligature with the serif of the letter D and to create enough white space to prevent a visual ligature in the case of zooming out. The kerning of the letter A is set to 10.

This kerning is designed for a serif font family in this case, Times New Roman. Of course, every font family requires a different hand-kerning to work with its serifs, shapes, and curves.