Guys,
As we start to know a bit of typography, it is a happy coincidence that a famous artist recently break rules that we are taugh as "unbreakable".
Indeed, Mike Meiré a famous German artist is his last magazin design simply stretched his font. It is no use to say that it effected like a bomb in the graphic design world.
Most of designers and Meiré him-self declared "YES, I did deliberately set out to break rules with this and YES, it is a provocation".
As a young and still learning designer (not yet brainwashed by these fundamental rules), i am not shocked.
When in week 2 we played to distort the word "distortion", we obviously spoiled the font, completely stretch in every direction.
Moreover, in design, i think that nothing is fixed. Can we consider that when sans serif fonts appeared, it was a provocation for the "serif font conservatives"?
Shifts happens, design is changing and in my opinion Meiré knew exactly what he did. The result is original and opens new windows.
Though, i am aware that this kind of design choice is not to put in everyone's hand. To stretch fonts can also be radically ugly.
I let you make your own opinion:
the Mike Meiré website: http://www.meireundmeire.de/
some design blog which talk about it and show the controversial designs:
http://www.designobserver.com/archives/027719.html#more (more challenging reading)