That’s quite sad and true. I’d go as far as to say that every graphic/visual/UX/whateverthenexthingwillbe designer has to not only know basics of typography, but practice it in every design, as it’s applicable not onl to “setting type”. The “10 things to master typography”-type articles could help a bit, but usually those are gimmicks that might even create more misconceptions and confusion.
It takes some practice to understand the quirks, even one by one; even if a person would only use, say, Myriad (which hopefully gained more appreciation after Apple’s embarrassing replacement of it in favor of Helvetica), I still believe it takes a good dose of education, time and practice to understand how to pick appropriate leading, tracking, size, hierarchy etc to at least fit various column widths (not to mention other factors).
However I think it’s indeed more about them not being tought; as most people with whom I’d worked would rather have a lot of hardship, because they kind of don’t even know where to begin and end up just relying on what looks right; without a trained eye and understanding of readability, legibility and appropriate typeface choice. And many think that if they have a huge library, then it’s sorted. Aaand end up using Helvetica…
