Distressed Holif 9 is a light, normal width, high contrast, upright, normal x-height font.
Keywords: posters, album art, packaging, headlines, branding, grunge, handmade, raw, edgy, playful, add texture, humanize type, evoke print wear, create attitude, simulate ink, scratchy, weathered, inked, organic, uneven.
A casual, monoline-leaning sans with a deliberately irregular, distressed construction. Strokes show broken edges, intermittent gaps, and uneven ink-like buildup that creates a speckled, worn texture across both straight stems and rounded bowls. Letterforms are generally simple and open, with slightly inconsistent curves and terminals that feel hand-drawn rather than mechanically perfect. Spacing and widths vary noticeably from glyph to glyph, reinforcing an organic rhythm while remaining readable in the sample text.
Well suited to display settings where texture is a feature—posters, flyers, album artwork, apparel graphics, and packaging that wants a handmade or worn-in feel. It can work for short paragraphs or captions when sizes are generous and output is clean, but it will shine most in headings and punchy copy where the distressed detail can be appreciated.
The overall tone is rough and tactile, like text pulled from a screenprint, dry-brush marker, or a photocopied zine page. It reads informal and expressive, with a slightly punk/DIY attitude that adds energy without becoming chaotic. The distressed detail introduces a sense of age, friction, and texture that feels crafted rather than polished.
The design appears intended to deliver a readable, straightforward sans framework while injecting personality through controlled erosion and ink breaks. It aims to emulate imperfect reproduction and hand-applied lettering, giving modern layouts an instantly tactile, DIY surface.
The distressing appears integrated into the stroke shapes (not just added noise), producing consistent interior breaks and edge chatter across caps, lowercase, and numerals. The texture is prominent enough to become part of the color of a paragraph, especially in lighter areas of the strokes, so it will visually “buzz” more than a clean sans at the same size.