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What you're saying is that Lobster, Bello, and Museo offend your sensibilities and are used frequently. That doesn't mean they are of poor quality. Bad choices? Maybe. Bad typeface designs? No.



I think there are a couple of things at play here:

The aesthetic - as art, tastes are subjective (and there is no accounting for them), there's basically stuff you like and stuff you don't like. Right or wrong, for many people, liking and not liking translates to "good" and "bad". For example, "Comic Sans is bad because it's ugly".

The craft - the technical parts (i.e., kerning, spacing, scaling) are much more objective and have more to do with quality, so it's easier to classify stuff as good or bad. For example, "Comic Sans is bad because its kerning is broken".

I usually ignore aesthetic commentary - everyone's different. Some people like the way Comic Sans looks, and that's OK.

On the other hand, I do think criticisms on the craftsmanship are valuable, especially as a non-designer.


Everything's subjective to a point, but when it doesn't scale and people are using them for tiny app logos and subheadings, sensibility has nothing to do with it. Not to mention these fonts are generally used in conjunction with some pretty terrible layer or CSS effects.


Agreed--in many of these cases, people need education about how to properly use display faces.




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