Distressed Romad 3 is a bold, normal width, high contrast, upright, normal x-height font.
Keywords: posters, headlines, album art, packaging, event flyers, grunge, vintage, edgy, handmade, playful, add texture, evoke printwear, create impact, signal diy, roughened, inked, weathered, imperfect, blotchy.
A heavy, display-oriented roman with simplified, sturdy forms and intentionally roughened contours. Strokes are generally straight and upright with a mix of rounded and squared terminals, but the outlines are repeatedly broken by chips, scrapes, and ink-like voids that create a worn, printed texture. Counters are often partially interrupted, producing a mottled interior that reads like distressed stamping or degraded letterpress. Spacing and character widths feel uneven by design, reinforcing a handmade, irregular rhythm in both caps and lowercase.
Well-suited for short, prominent text where texture and impact matter—posters, headlines, album/cover art, merchandise, and packaging labels. It can work for subheads or short pull quotes when paired with a cleaner companion for body copy. Use at moderate-to-large sizes to preserve the distressed detail and avoid the texture collapsing in smaller settings.
The overall tone is gritty and tactile, evoking aged posters, DIY zines, and stamped packaging. Its distressed texture adds attitude and a slightly chaotic energy, balancing toughness with a casual, craft-like informality. The effect reads more expressive than polished, leaning into imperfection as a stylistic feature.
The design appears intended to deliver a bold, attention-grabbing display voice with a deliberately degraded print/ink aesthetic. Rather than aiming for typographic neutrality, it prioritizes character and material feel, simulating wear and rough reproduction to communicate grit, nostalgia, and DIY energy.
The distressing is consistent across the set, appearing as repeated edge chipping and internal bite-marks rather than random noise, which helps the texture hold together in words. In longer lines, the broken counters and rough edges become the dominant personality, so the font reads best when the texture is meant to be seen.