Arial was created to piss off anybody with taste.

:-)

Just kidding. Comic Sans seems to have been created for a specific purpose:
http://www.connare.com/comic.htm

Read through the font descriptions over at Hoefler and Frere-Jones or The Font Bureau web sites. Both foundries sell typefaces with pretty specific uses—just keep in mind that in some cases they will be fonts issued as part of a larger family.

And don’t forget about newspaper fonts. There’s a ton of great material out there about newspaper fonts.

Frutiger for signage
Meta for low quality printing
Clearview for U.S. Highways

Hi there:

In addition to the above mentioned, Matthew Carter's Bitstream/ITC Charter was created for low resolution laser printers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitstream_Charter
http://www.graphic-design.com/Type/opentype/index.html

For a similar purpose- Amerigo by Gerard Unger:
http://www.gerardunger.com/allmytypedesigns/allmytypedesigns09.html

Erik Spiekermann designed a special version of Meta suitable for metalic machine routing.
http://www.spiekermann.com/mten/type_schriften/

Also CP Company by Fabrizio Schiavi is specially designed and hinted for on screen use. There is also a special pixel font for Flash.

http://www.myfonts.com/search?search%5Btext%5D=cp+company

Mike Diaz :-)

These are perfect.. thank you!

And wasn't Times originally created for the Times of London?
And Avant Garde for the magazine of the same name.

Yes

j a m e s

According to FontFont: FF Signa, "Designed for the Danish Design Center, it is used there for printed material and exhibitions as well as the internal signage system".

Mikey :-)