kerning
“Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.”
—Blaise Pascal
Full transparency: We were recently alerted to the fact that a publication called “Messing About in Boats” already exists. It’s a boating magazine that has been in print since 1983, which meant we needed to make an adjustment, change direction, and rename our forthcoming bi-annual journal.
“Messing about in boats” is a phrase from Kenneth Grahame’s book “The Wind in the Willows”, which is the inspiration for both the name of our house in Maine and our new small press. After spending time combing his text for other options, we realized we didn’t need to marry ourselves to the book, but might expand our search. But where? To what?
Then Maya woke up one morning this week and said a new title had come to her during the night: Kerning.
Kerning is the amount of space between two letters, an often-unnoticed adjustment made by designers to connect the letters, which in turn helps with our understanding of a word. Kerning is the unseen in everything, it’s the liminal space. And since we’ve said we want to publish the work of writers whose work lives in this particular space, it feels perfect.
The word liminal comes from the Latin. Its root is limen, which means threshold. So the liminal space is the space between here and there—the transition space between something we have left behind and where we might end up. It’s a space full of curiosity and possibility. It’s the space where we make adjustments to further our connections, where we leave room for vulnerability and trust. It’s our opportunity for kerning. And so we’ve made a shift, adjusted our plans, and we’re thrilled to share the new title of our bi-annual publication is
Kerning | a space for words
It’s true, somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known—and here’s the redesign already in place.