I noticed that Georgia does not have kerning, and I'm trying to figure out why. I got only vague answers like that Georgia was designed for legibility at low resolutions, but I don't know how that is relevant. Does kerning decrease legibility at low resolutions? Or why else would be Georgia designed without kerning?

Just speculating, but it may have to do with the fact that it was originally intended as a screen font for Windows back in the ‘90s, not for, say, print publishing.

How does that it was intended as a screen font in the 90s matter? I guess that it is somehow relevant, but I would like some technical reasoning. Most screen fonts have kerning, and kerning was common already in the 90s.

As you say, these fonts were drawn (and hinted) to fall a best as possible on a low-resolution pixel grid. That was a new approach. But kerning can interfere with that. It’s much easier to keep the letters on a grid when individual letter pairs don’t cause slight shifts. Carter explained, that this was also the reason for the bold being so thick. It had to be one full addition pixel for the stems in a small size—not less, not more. The same idea can apply to kerning as well.

But unless we find a quote or ask Carter himself, it remains speculation. In the context of system fonts in the 1990s, it’s not at all surprising to me. The typical office apps at that time had kerning turned off by default or didn’t even support it. It wasn’t a big concern in this context.

21 hours ago, Ralf Herrmann said:

It’s much easier to keep the letters on a grid when individual letter pairs don’t cause slight shifts. Carter explained, that this was also the reason for the bold being so thick.

Keeping letters on a grid would work only at some pixel sizes, but I imagine that Georgia was used at many different pixel sizes. Was it optimized for some common pixel sizes? Or it would have hinting, and that would align the shapes to pixels at almost all sizes, and it would work with kerning. I am a supporter of RTFM, so, ideally, I would have documentation of Georgia where the design and intended use cases are explained. Does something like that exist?

Where is the mentioned explanation by Carter? That could give me more of what I am looking for.

If you haven’t already, try asking here: https://carterandcone.com/contact/