I agree — it’s been a buzzword in the graphic design industry for at least 10 years now. During Signifier’s 15 year development I've seen many trends surface and disappear! And during the a year we spent working on the marketing concept and approach for Signifier, I struggled with even mentioning the term “Brutalism”. In the end, I decided it was OK, because it was true to my process, research and thinking.

We work very hard to ensure concept, execution and communication are as solid as they possibly can be. I would never emptily invoke anything.

I understand Brutalist architecture to be characterized by the avoidance of arbitrary ornaments added to the actual structure of the building, which should be embraced and valued rather than hidden and considered too plain.

In the case of a digital font, there are only a bunch of splines, without separate "layers" of structure and ornaments.

The difference between loose rounded curves and sharp quantized curves is therefore the same as the difference between buildings with different room shapes, not the difference between more or less Brutalist styles.

Even if not meaningfully Brutalist, this font makes sense (the reasons to prefer quantized shapes are particularly valid) and looks surprisingly good, and that's what should matter.