Grunge Fonts in Modern Branding

You'd think that dirty, distressed, and practically illegible fonts wouldn't be popular in the commercial world.

You'd be wrong.

In a world where everyone wants to be "edgy," grunge fonts have become the new goto typeface for breaking out your new product or rebranding your old one. From clothing companies to pop stars to evangelical Christian culture, grunge fonts have emerged from the punk rock basement and taken over the mainstream. Here's just a few examples:

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This heavyweight in the worlds of both branded clothing and MMA showcases uses a thick-stemmed font with a bracketed light serif for its main logo, distressing it with some small to medium smudges. Coupling this with graphics thickly laden with deathly or fantastic images, gives them a downright "Goth" feel.

When they want to get even more grungy, they do a similar, but more intense stressing of a blackletter font for some medieval grunge action.






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Beyonce's logo should probably be considered an individual piece of art, rather than a font family, but I use it as an example of the far reach of grunge fonts because it shares two important characteristics with Affliction and a number of other "edgy" branding attempts.

1. Distressing. Though the distressing is more floral than chaotic in Beyonce's logo, it is definitely a bit dirtier than a plain floarl motif would be.
2. Fraktur Font. Many grunge fonts are based on Blackletter typefaces, with the Fraktur family being a very popular choice.

And finally, an obversation from Stuff Christian Culture Likes where it is noted that "Christian items marketed to teens usually use an "extreme," "edgy" or "grunge" font."