[devadvance]

For purely aesthetic purposes, this might be a fair point. However, there are many reasons to use custom fonts beyond that. One example is accessibility in a very broad sense. In some circumstances, it reasonable to use a font with more legible type across device types, more support for internationalization (i18n), or better support for uncommon characters (e.g., mathematics).

Another example is alternatives to image assets. Emoji are the common example here, but the private use areas [1] mean that fonts can be used to deliver what would otherwise be raster images or SVGs. A great example is mixing symbols in with text without resorting to images or CSS-via-spans to solve the problem. Think public transit icons, for instance.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_Use_Areas