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The 'brand' needs to differentiate, though. And if Facebook's empire does it, so must Twitter.

It seems like when you're VC-backed and get to a certain size, one of the items on the checklist is "design custom font that looks like every other VC-backed platform's custom font, but is slightly different."

Didn't Dropbox also make their own font?

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You are correct. They did make their own font. Which seemed like a very strange expense to me. Even though I use Dropbox heavily, I'll almost never see their font. Dropbox is used mostly through the OS's file manager.

Middle management becomes a bit of a circle jerk in large companies. They have to find reasons to justify their existence so you get branding initiatives like this to pump up the annual reviews.

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