Distressed Epdat 5 is a regular weight, normal width, medium contrast, upright, tall x-height font.
Keywords: posters, titles, packaging, book covers, album art, eerie, antique, theatrical, mysterious, ornate, add texture, evoke antiquity, create drama, thematic branding, headline impact, spiky, ink-trap, engraved, bracketed, high-shouldered.
An upright serif design with calligraphic, oldstyle proportions and noticeably sculpted interiors. Stems and bowls are punctuated by sharp notches, pinched counters, and decorative chisel-like cuts that create a mottled, carved rhythm through the letterforms. Serifs are wedgey and often bracketed, with pointed terminals and occasional hooked tails in the lowercase, giving the outlines a lively, irregular silhouette while maintaining consistent baseline and cap alignment. Overall spacing reads moderately open, but the frequent interior cutouts make color and texture the dominant visual feature.
Best suited for short-form display settings where texture is an asset: posters, title treatments, book or game covers, album art, and themed packaging. It can work for pull quotes or headings, but extended body copy may feel visually busy due to the persistent interior distressing.
The font projects a dark, antiquarian mood—part gothic display, part aged print artifact. Its spurred, nicked detailing feels theatrical and slightly sinister, suggesting mystery, folklore, and vintage spectacle rather than clean editorial neutrality.
The design appears intended to combine a classic serif foundation with deliberately distressed, engraved-like cuts to produce a strong thematic voice. It prioritizes atmosphere and tactile texture—evoking worn printing, carving, or ink-scored forms—while keeping a recognizable Latin skeleton for readable headline use.
The distinctive internal “bites” and narrow apertures create strong texture at word level, especially in rounded letters and in dense sequences like m/n/w. Numerals follow the same carved detailing and feel display-oriented; legibility is best when set with comfortable tracking and at sizes where the interior cuts remain clear.