The point is, in web design there are a lot of different aspects that have to be balanced. One of them is accessibility & speed, an other one is visual design and identity. The choice of a web font over one of the ~6 standard fonts affects both of these and there is a choice to make.
This choice can be: I use a web font because this allows me to convey 80% of my visual identity with the text, I can put the text (and content) as the central element of the page and include no images on the page except for a small logo, leading to a fast loading page. For this, I accept that the user has to wait a little bit until the text is displayed when he/she visits the page the first time and the font isn’t cached yet. On a decent internet connection this might not be noticeable but on a bad 3G connection it might take the page load from 4s to 6s. Do the benefits outweigh the risks/disadvantages?
I do agree though that this decision is often not made consciously and a lot of times a web font is slapped upon a site just because we can. Way too often, visual designers create pictures of websites in Photoshop with no idea about the implications. On the other hand, I have seen that the rise of web fonts has made designers shift away from creating designs that are basically a frame with the visual identity where they slap in some random content. A lot of sites now treat the content as the main element of the site, reducing all other elements to a minimum. I would argue that this change greatly improves the quality of web sites and that the rise of web fonts is one of the main drivers of this change.
>use a web font because this allows me to convey 80% of my visual identity with the text
You lost me here. You convey absolutely no visual identity like that. People are reading the text, it is not window dressing. I'm sure marketing would be shocked to hear they don't need to worry about logos or colours or branding any more, because they can convey 80% of their identity just by using a font where the a has a 1% longer tail.
This choice can be: I use a web font because this allows me to convey 80% of my visual identity with the text, I can put the text (and content) as the central element of the page and include no images on the page except for a small logo, leading to a fast loading page. For this, I accept that the user has to wait a little bit until the text is displayed when he/she visits the page the first time and the font isn’t cached yet. On a decent internet connection this might not be noticeable but on a bad 3G connection it might take the page load from 4s to 6s. Do the benefits outweigh the risks/disadvantages?
I do agree though that this decision is often not made consciously and a lot of times a web font is slapped upon a site just because we can. Way too often, visual designers create pictures of websites in Photoshop with no idea about the implications. On the other hand, I have seen that the rise of web fonts has made designers shift away from creating designs that are basically a frame with the visual identity where they slap in some random content. A lot of sites now treat the content as the main element of the site, reducing all other elements to a minimum. I would argue that this change greatly improves the quality of web sites and that the rise of web fonts is one of the main drivers of this change.