What makes a font beautiful?

This is the copy from a little page I just added to my site. If you want to see the graphics go there. Blogger does not do graphics well or easily.

There has been a disturbing trend lately of incredibly gorgeous fonts that make bad typography.

How can that be?

To understand that, we need to look at what good typography is. I often tell my students and apprentices:

Good typography is not noticed!

If you notice the typography or font, you are missing the purpose of your design. Here's an example of a new font design that is touted as wonderful, that is absolutely useless. I wouldn't call it gorgeous, but it makes a strong example to start with.

Mommie by Jocham

Like most scripts, it is very hard to read. But, beyond that, the "beauty" of the font is very distracting. (I must confess that I do not find it good-looking at all, personally). I have never seen this font where I actually read the copy. I was always struck by the font design. That is not a good thing.

Let's look at an undeniably gorgeous font family

Carmel by Leuschke

This one is by a lettering artist named Rob Leuschke and it is exquisite: modern, graceful, beautiful, any of hundreds of other adjectives. Like all scripts, there are severe readability issues.

However, the real issue again is it's very beauty. It gets in the way of actual use because it is almost impossible to use this font without people reacting to the font design instead of the content it is expressing.

This is not limited to scripts alone

Increasingly, we are seeing serif and sans serif families that have the same issues. As independent font designers continue to increase, we are seeing ever more personal expressions of typographic beauty. Many of these are very hard to use because the design is so intrusive.

Be careful of the fonts you use!