I agree with you that this is design, often akin to industrial design more than art, which could also be described as art meets practical considerations or too

I agree with you that this is design, often akin to industrial design more than art, which could also be described as art meets practical considerations or too narrowly, art meets commerce. And that's why I'm casting a wide net in my remarks by bringing up pixel alignment considerations, as well as licensing and other considerations. These are critical considerations to typography in practice. For example the politics and business constraints surrounding the development, licensing, and use of Helvetica in the 90's are way more complex than simply saying, "Microsoft didn't want to pay for Helvetica", which is how many designers put it. These complaints about licensing also, by the way, give away many of their visceral emotion-based reactions to Arial, rather than objective design purity. Clearly every party is affected in some way by the commerce of design, which often seems to inform designer's reactions too, especially when the licensing question is over-simplified.