Distressed Obsa 5 is a regular weight, normal width, high contrast, upright, normal x-height font.
Keywords: posters, album art, book covers, titles, packaging, grunge, rough, vintage, analog, industrial, add grit, evoke age, analog print, poster impact, tactile texture, ragged, weathered, eroded, textured, blotchy.
A distressed, serifed letterform style with rough, eroded edges and mottled interiors that mimic worn printing or ink breakup. Strokes are generally sturdy but irregular, with frequent notches, pitting, and uneven terminals that create a noisy silhouette. The design keeps a fairly traditional skeleton—clear stems, bowls, and crossbars—while letting texture dominate the contours; counters remain readable but often appear chipped. Spacing and glyph widths feel uneven in an intentional, handmade way, reinforcing a printed-from-type or stamped rhythm.
Well suited for display typography where texture is desired: posters, album and event graphics, book or zine covers, packaging, and headline treatments. It can also work for short pull quotes or labels where a worn, printed aesthetic is the goal, but is less appropriate for long-form body text that requires clean, quiet readability.
The overall tone is gritty and timeworn, evoking aged paper, rough presswork, and utilitarian labeling. It feels analog and tactile rather than polished, with a slightly ominous or underground edge that can read as punk, horror-adjacent, or archival depending on context.
The font appears designed to deliver a convincing distressed print look while maintaining recognizable, classic letter structures. Its intention is to add instant grit and age to typography—suggesting wear, reproduction artifacts, or rough production—without losing the underlying serifed readability needed for titles and branding accents.
In continuous text the distressed texture becomes the main visual feature, producing strong character at display sizes while adding visual noise at smaller sizes. Uppercase forms feel bold and poster-ready; lowercase retains the same battered texture, keeping paragraphs stylistically consistent but inherently rough.