The truth is, design is complicated because it is not (yet) a science. Typography is important, but it is not king. What we really need to do is get inside the user's head and model their thought process. This is probably impossible, so we should do the next best thing: learn empathy. Be the user. Not some one-trick pony.
That's actually one of the things that worries me about Windows Phone 7's UI - it's very heavily text-based, which facilitates first-time usage (no getting things wrong there, unless your text really sucks), but punishes expert/frequent users.
Text takes up a disproportionate amount of screen real estate compared to, say, iconography. They are also harder to scan, their location harder to keep consistent (due to document flow), and given that most people's memories are visual first and linguistic second, harder to remember and make an impression upon.
On small devices, loading your page up with text is generally a bad idea. Obviously unavoidable in certain circumstances (say: reading an article), but there are a lot of things out there in the design world that isn't typography.
Disclaimer: I work for microsoft, but nowhere related to the phone team.
Edit: My point is more about interfaces than design. I know nothing about typography.
Also, textual interfaces usually make it easy to say, "now group that set of operations and give it a convenient name" (scripting), while graphically interfaces usually don't, and users are stuck with whatever individual actions the UI designers added to menus.
Neither tendency is inherent in using text or graphics, but it usually works out that way. I've wondered about this for a while, but text vs. graphic interface discussions ("keyboard vs. mouse", which often overlap) usually miss that distinction, much like they do "approachable to new users" vs. "efficient for committed long-term users".
1) Fundamentally typophiles are geeks, and "typophilia" is no different than any of the myriad other intellectual obsessions that geeks will develop.
2) Designers are accorded much more respect than traditional geeks, in part because it's much easier for the layperson to appreciate their work. (designers also tend to be better dressed, better looking, and more sociable than other geeks).
So in a certain sense it comes down to jealousy - here are people doing the same basic thing I do, but they're perceived as cool whereas I'm perceived as perhaps a little odd. That said, it doesn't help when they refer refer to my people as "flash boys and neck beards".
Sure, some designers may be computer savvy and may in themselves be designers who are also geeks, but being a designer neither requires the traditional qualities of a geek.
No. Users are people with an opinion. User experience designers are those who deal with all those user opinions and try to find the best compromise. User experience designers are engineers.
http://www.informationarchitects.jp/en/can-experience-be-des...
But that's not what the article is about.