Why are tech companies making custom typefaces?
This is one of those times where as a working creative that frequently reads Hacker News I straight up face palm.<p>I have to imagine a lot of these commenters would say the same  in regards to any sort of subjective artistic choice that isn&#x27;t purely optimized for efficiency.<p>I would like to leave you with a quote by Briano Eno from a really good lecture he gave several years ago that I hope can provide a jumping off point for alternate ways to think about style, and why I think y&#x27;all are asking the wrong questions.<p>&quot;So the first question is, why is any of that important? Why do we do it? And notice it’s not only us relatively wealthy people, in terms of global wealth, who are doing it - it’s everybody that we know of. Every human group we know of is spending a lot of their time – in fact almost all of their surplus time and energy – is spent in the act of stylising things and enjoying other people’s stylisations of things. So my question is, what is it for? In fact, my friend Danny Hillus, who’s a scientist, was asked by a well-known science website, along with about 300 other scientists, he was asked what is the most interesting scientific question at the moment? A lot of the other people replied with things about the cosmological constant and Ryman’s Hypothesis and all these very complicated things. And his question was very simple: he said why do we like music? And if you start thinking about that, that is really one of the most mysterious things you can imagine. Why do we even have an interest in music? Why do we have preferences? Why do we like this song better than that one? Why do we like this Beethoven sonata better than that Beethoven sonata? Why do we like this performance of that same sonata better than that other performance? We had very fine distinctions about things that we prefer, aesthetic things. And, yet, none of it seems to have much to do with functionalism, with staying alive and certainly not with industries I would say.&quot; - Brian Eno<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bbc.co.uk&#x2F;mediacentre&#x2F;speeches&#x2F;2015&#x2F;bbc-music-john-peel-lecture" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bbc.co.uk&#x2F;mediacentre&#x2F;speeches&#x2F;2015&#x2F;bbc-music-jo...</a>