Blackletter Upva 1 is a bold, narrow, high contrast, italic, normal x-height font.
Keywords: posters, album covers, headlines, logos, packaging, gothic, ominous, medieval, aggressive, dramatic, intimidate, signal tradition, add grit, increase impact, fractured, spiky, angular, textured, condensed.
A condensed, forward-slanted blackletter with tall proportions and tightly packed rhythm. Strokes show pronounced thick–thin modulation and sharp, broken terminals, with small thorn-like notches that create a distressed, chipped texture. Curves are minimized in favor of angular joins and faceted bowls, and many counters read as narrow vertical apertures. Numerals and capitals maintain the same steep, pointed construction, giving the set a cohesive, rigid silhouette that stays visually dense in text.
Best suited to short, high-impact text such as posters, album and event graphics, mastheads, logos, and themed packaging where a gothic or medieval atmosphere is desired. It performs particularly well at larger sizes where the fractured edges and interior cuts remain legible, while long passages or small UI text may feel heavy and busy.
The overall tone is dark and theatrical, with a medieval severity and a slightly hostile edge from the jagged, eroded detailing. It evokes black-metal, horror, and old-world proclamation aesthetics—formal in structure but gritty in finish.
The design appears intended to modernize traditional blackletter by adding a distressed, blade-like finish and a pronounced forward lean, aiming for a loud, contemporary display voice while preserving the genre’s vertical, angular structure.
The texture introduces intentional irregularity along edges, so letterforms can appear to shimmer or vibrate at smaller sizes. The strong slant and compact spacing push the design toward display use where the dramatic silhouette reads first, and the internal details read second.