DEAR SARAH
Dear Sarah from Christian Robertson aims at taking us back to a time when people wrote in longhand on wax-sealed stationery. The promotional copy published at Veer.com goes on to say, “Until the advent of OpenType, the magic of handwritten characters was ruined when identical letters glaringly showed up twice in a row.” Dear Sarah Pro uses the OpenType technology to its full potential. The font has hundreds of contextual alternate characters, a gaggle of swash characters, small caps (often used in handwriting), and a series of dingbats.

While the font does an adequate job of replicating handwriting, the real stuff is only available at the end of a pen. If you want handwriting or calligraphy, you should hire a calligrapher. There is a spontaneity and verve in handwriting and calligraphy that cannot be replicated in a font—no matter how many alternate and swash characters are included. Most handwriting fonts are little more than typography’s answer to Formica.

Another issue: Unless you’ve invested in an OpenType-friendly application, all you will get when you set Dear Sarah is the basic alphabet, which means that you’ll see “identical letters glaringly showing up twice in a row.” Most OpenType fonts do not suffer that much when set in something other than an OpenType application. Oh, you may not get small caps, old style . gures, and a bunch of ligatures, but the font will still perform adequately. Since Dear Sarah is all about its swashes and alternate characters, set it in a non OpenType-friendly application, and you’ll just get another font that tries to mimic handwriting. Rating: 24 Point
DEAR SARAH is available from Veer at www.veer.com.

DÜRER CAPS
Why can’t designers leave poor Albrecht alone? What is their penchant for his constructed caps?

In 1525, master artist Albrecht Dürer set forth a system of rules for the geometric construction of Roman capitals as a guide for inscription artists. This form of “logical” approach to letter design was attempted over the next 500 years with varying degrees of success. Dürer’s Caps have also been enamored by graphic designers since, well, there were graphic designers.

Like Dürer’s original, Dürer Caps is somewhat complicated and not entirely successful. (Remove the geometry from Dürer’s letters and you’re left with flawed and somewhat ungainly character shapes.)

When you purchase Dürer Caps from P22 you actually get four fonts. This digitized version of Dürer’s Roman capitals features the constructed outlines for use as decorative initials. In addition, the font has (in the lowercase position) the full alphabet (as unadorned capitals) for setting headlines and titles in the classic Roman style. These two sets of characters have been designed to work together for two-color decorative initials. A third version of these letters is also included in the same font (there is a key chart for character locations) that combines the outline and the filled-in letter.

To make use of the two-part/two-color initials, however, the font must be used in an application that allows for layers or kerning. P22 suggests that you set copy in another (read: easier to decipher) font, edit your copy, and then do a font change to Dürer Caps. The results are satisfying—if you are one of the Dürer constructed cap lovers—but this is clearly not a font for the casual scrapbooker. Rating: 24 Point
DÜRER CAPS is available from P22 at www.p22.com.