🏆 Steven Heller’s Font of the Month: Brutal Types

Steven Heller’s Font of the Month:
Brutal Types Collection

“Brutal” is such a nasty, albeit seductive, word. A quick visit to my desktop Oxford dictionary confirms that the adjective “brutal” is, etymologically speaking, derived from a corruption of the name Brutus, the Roman immortalized as Julius Caesar’s infamous assassin (tip of the hat to William Shakespeare). “Brutal” in current usage has several related literal meanings, including heavy, bulky, inert, and lifeless, that figuratively imply stupid; thus, the name Brutus for the thick-headed bully in Popeye cartoons. We’ve all known someone who is brutal — thoughtless, mean, and sadistic. Then there is Brutalist architecture, which takes its name from the French word for concrete: béton brut. It signifies buildings that are constructed with exposed concrete, characterized by geometric austerity and fortress-like impenetrability.
 

Can typefaces also be brutal? Certainly! Once you go down the brutalist rabbit hole, it’s likely to find bold and ultra-bold sans serif types that fit into one or more of the above definitions. To satisfy a craving for such typographic brutalism, check out the superfamily of related fonts that vary in size, shape, and form: the Brutal Type Pack No. 01 is a “curated selection of fonts inspired by 20th-century European architectural avant-gardes” released by Retype Foundry and freshly designed in 2026 by Ramiro Espinoza, Paula Mastrangelo, and Fabian Kolar.
 

Selecting from the lot of them, my favorite is Kazemat Regular because its E, F, S, and T are designed with brutalist irregularities that give the font its curiously hand-drawn presence.