Designing a typeface is a process in which a large number of (arbitrary) decisions on detail, construction, contrast, and relationships have to be taken. All of these decisions are choices between many options and alternatives for a particular situation.

These decisions are made by the designer for many reasons, based on experience, preference, purpose, time, etc. If a typeface was made by someone else, it would have been different, even if the intent was to make the same thing. It is that collection of personal, specific decisions and opinions that make a typeface useful, appropriate, good or bad, that is its value. That also makes a typeface undeniably the intellectual property of its designer.

Erik Van Blokland.