futura alternatives, spudart forums

I came upon an interesting article today, and under most circumstances it would come off as a bit snobbish.  Now there are certain fonts that designer's have an unwritten law not to use, the two that immediately come to my mind are Papyrus and Comic Sans.  The focused distaste for those two faces in particular (one of which was designed by Microsoft), seems to be derived from its overabundance and misuse in design.  It is a claim that anyone that sees themselves as artistic will use either of these fonts on their menus, spa signage, store signage, flyers, websites, the list could really go on forever.  The truth of the matter is, the fonts being "pretty" or "fun" being used by hack designers seek to devalue the art and craft in good design.  It is therefore easy for me to understand that these two fonts should not be used.

That is why I was taken aback when I saw an article by Jessica Helfland commenting on how many young designers she had seen using a personal favorite of mine, Futura.  Now this whole first semester at Pratt, my professors have been speaking out against the word, "Like" when it comes to defending any of our design decisions.  Rightfully so, our design decisions, especially with type, should not necessarily be chosen just because we "like" the font.  Helfland comments particularly on one student that redesigned a series of Freud covers, and then was only able to loosely defend the reasoning behind using Futura all over it with guidance from Helfland.  

It was just recently that I started to move away from using Futura, mostly because my Typography instructor was critical of my usage.  Afterall, a typeface is meant to reflect, in abstract thinking, a voice based on its appearance; I do want to make sure my voice is understood.