What exactly were you expecting, a thesis project or documentary or something? As far as I can tell, petykowski just wanted to recreate the typefaces used on the Underground's digital signage. That's fine. Not everything has to be some magnum opus.

I'm speaking as a graphic designer who's been obsessed with typography for decades. Craft and taste are qualities I ordinarily pay a lot of attention to, and if petykowski had talked to anyone affiliated with these typefaces, I'm sure it would have been fascinating. But it's also important to remember that these faces are not in the same category as a high-end serif or something. They serve a bluntly functional purpose. The medium for which they're designed is entirely different. Of course they're simple and easy to copy; that's the point.

So I'm not sure how you are defining "craft" or "taste" here. These designs are crisp and legible. Your comment feels a little like somebody looking at an icon of Clarus the Dogcow (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogcow) and saying "Ah, but where's the dimensionality? Where's the realism? Can this truly be considered a rendering of an animal? How lazy."

I personally love pixel/dot-matrix typefaces. I hadn't known about this project, so I'm grateful that somebody went to the trouble of doing this.