Distressed: Photocopied/Misprinted/Aged

Stephen Coles

Last edited May 15, 2015

It’s often best to apply your own effects to make type appear authentically aged, but sometimes a distressed typeface is the easiest and most prudent solution. Here are fonts that emulate the damaged, weathered, antiqued, worn, or corroded ink of photocopied or misprinted type on the page.

See more distressed fonts »

Yanek Iontef loves the printing on cardboard packaging. For years, he collected empty cardboard boxes that once carried imported goods. His studio soon looked like a warehouse. To regain ground, he began transforming the visual language of the boxes into a font with universal appeal. Then, he donated the whole of his cardboard collection to a local recycling facility. There are two FF... Read More

Just as popular as the digital typewriter face FF Trixie are those in the FF Instant Types series: FF Confidential, FF Dynamoe, FF Flightcase, FF Karton, and FF Stamp Gothic. Named after the places each comes from, these fonts feature familiar character sets from everyday letters and figures all around us: packaging, flight cases, children’s stamp boxes, Dymo tape labelers. We see them every... Read More

FF Blur is from FontFont’s earliest period, made in 1991 by British designer Neville Brody. The typeface was developed by blurring a grayscale image of an existing grotesque and then vectorizing what remained. Though deceptively simple, his process was imitated widely afterward, with mediocre results. Notwithstanding the knock-offs, FF Blur entered the zeitgeist of early and mid-1990s design,... Read More

According to its designer, John Critchley, FF Bull is an authentic reproduction of old John Bull rubber stamp type sets, inked to varying amounts to produce six discrete weights. Each is fully interchangeable and can be combined or overlaid to provide additional variety. Certain of the weights contain special “dirt-keys,” which can be used to customize a piece of design even further.