give me a break, this list is awful. how is slant even on this list? warnock is practically unreadable.

You say these fonts made the list not because they are favorites but because they are “important”. It would be great if you explained why they are important otherwise they are just fonts on a page with no context.

If you click on the link to read the original article, you’ll see an explanation (both in the article introduction, and as a more detailed comment) as well as a lively discussion about a great variety of other candidates. Cheers.

@Rachel if you click through to the original post, he does explain them:

I had hoped that commenters would have tried to figure out my rationale or posited their own for the faces listed before I had to return with mine. And I certainly wished that Stephen had given the reasons for his list of alternatives. His list seems to me to be more about aesthetics and popularity than the more esoteric reasons for a typeface to have had an impact. However, I would agree that Adobe Garamond Premier Pro is a worthy candidate.
I am not a big fan of a number of faces on my list (or on his)—some I detest and others I just find ugly—which is why it is not a list about popularity or about aesthetics but about something more elusive. Anyway, here goes my quick rationale for each face.
1. Clearview—the first professionally designed typeface to be accepted for use in American road signage. This is a landmark moment in graphic design and typography, an instance where both professions will have a broad impact on the average American who will have no idea that he is a beneficiary.
2. Retina—a worthy digital successor to the composing machine and phototype work of C.H. Griffith, Matthew Carter and Adrian Frutiger in the area of typefaces designed for legibility within specific circumstances
3. Minuscule—a fascinating experiment in rethinking our views on what makes a typeface legibile at small sizes
4. Magma [not Magma Sans]—intriguing for the “halo” concept as a means of compensating in the digital world for weight loss or gain through various printing techniques
5. Warnock Pro—the first OpenType font with contextual features according to Adobe; and thus it gets my nod over Adobe Garamond Premier Pro. I would champion the latter as the first revival of a revival. Slimbach has made an “authentic” design even more “authentic” as he had the rare chance to start over and do what he couldn’t do the first time.
6. Burgues Script—this is the script typeface that has made graphic designers realize the possibilities of OpenType; its alternates, contextual characters, swash characters, loose flourishes, etc. go beyond Bickham Script and paved the way for other faces such as Compendium Script and Champion Script. Moreover, it is amazingly true to its source.
7. Studio Lettering—for adding a new wrinkle to the idea of “smart” fonts with the contextual “language” alternates. Underware’s Liza has taken this even further and could have been added to the list.
8. Freight—of all of the font families that have attempted to go beyond the now standard dichotomy of serif and sans, this seems to be the most successful with its wide range of “sizes”. Other choices could have been Nick Shinn’s Scotch Modern and Figgins combo or Jeremy Tankard’s Trilogy.
9. Yale—the first custom typeface designed for an institution (not a commercial entity) in this country; and one that is being used in a broad manner from official documents and signage to student term papers. Another candidate would have been Peter Verheul’s Rijksoverheid Serif and Sans for the Dutch government.
10. History—a glorious failure; a new way to look at digital letterforms that is more thrilling for its ideas than its execution.
There is a bias in my list toward typefaces that are functional, experimental or somehow the “first”. Besides the fonts I have noted above I could suggest FontStruct (not strictly a single font but nevertheless revolutionary), Punchcut’s typeface for Qualcomm, Ken Barber’s Blaktur, and Gerard Unger’s Capitolium.
By the way, why is “of the decade” a “little bit of a stretch”? The typefaces on the list range from 2000 to 2009 in their release dates.