Botio Nikoltchev was born in Sofia March 29, 1978. Growing up in the fields of Bulgaria, he once found a little brick of dry clay shaped like the city map of Berlin. Taking it as a sign he took all he had — which wasn’t much but heavy. Botio went all the way to the promised town, the place to be: Berlin! And one step further: He studied communication design at the University of Applied Science Potsdam and took type design classes with Luc(as) de Groot. After his studies Botio worked with Ole Schäfer (primetype) on the Cyrillic characters of PTL Manual, PTL Manual Mono and PTL Notes. Since 2010 he has been collaborating with Ralph du Carrois and Erik Spiekermann as type designer and art director at Carrois Type Design, focusing on Cyrillic, Greek and Arabic language extensions and CI projects. In 2014, Botio founded his own type foundry lettersoup.