In some ways I feel compelled to agree with his point, even though almost every thought in my mind goes contrary to that. People trust the Wall street journal

In some ways I feel compelled to agree with his point, even though almost every thought in my mind goes contrary to that. People trust the Wall street journal which has a fixutre of using Times Roman for most of their articles. I think it would advantagous at least intially for some sites to jump on that where their content depends on trust that the site has not yet acquired on their own. Ugliness (if you want to call it that) may work over a bubbly fonty web 2.0 site. At the same time I agree with brlewis expectations idea of the user. If I wanted to put my photos anywhere it would be a disney like bubbly, fonty like site. But all this is just a view on what works initially (or on first glance), afterwards it still up to the site to retain and grow their user base. And thats based on content not ugliness or beauty.