Meet Botter, a sans serif with soft corners and strong character

Botter is Brutal Types’ contemporary technical sans – a family of seven weights with matching italics, for 14 styles in total. Type designers and frequent collaborators, David Quay and Ramiro Espinoza, built it around a contradiction: a hexagonal, modular structure whose corners are softened by rounded forms, making it rigid yet approachable. Its starting point was a set of sketches Quay made in 2007. “The original idea was sparked by a photograph I took from the waterbus between Dordrecht and Rotterdam, while crossing the Nieuwe Maas,” he explains. “Because the photograph was taken from a distance, enlarging it caused the rectangular counters to appear subtly rounded.” He then set the prototypes aside as other work took over. The delay is ordinary enough in type design; most designers, Espinoza notes, keep “folders full of unfinished alphabets and early concepts, waiting for the right moment.” Returning to the drawings in 2026, Espinoza worked the single-weight original into a full family, refining the proportions and adding the matching italics. “The lighter weights proved to be the most challenging, as they often do,” he adds, “but we’re very pleased with how they ultimately came together.” “At first glance, the letterforms seem almost like a visual oxymoron, combining rectilinear and rounded shapes,” Quay details, “yet by softening the outer corners, the contrast is reduced.” The balance lies in a division of labour between the outer and inner shapes: “The outer structure remains largely conventional, while the rounded inner forms define the typeface’s distinctive character.”