Droid is a

font family A typeface (or font family) is a design of letters, numbers and other symbols, to be used in printing or for electronic display. Most typefaces include variations in size (e.g., 24 point), weight (e.g., light, bold), slope (e.g., italic), width ...

first released in 2007 and created by

Ascender Corporation Ascender Corporation was a digital typeface foundry and software development company in the Chicago suburb of Elk Grove Village, Illinois. It was founded in 2004 by a team of software developers, typographers, and people previously involved in dev ...

for use by the

Open Handset Alliance The Open Handset Alliance (OHA) is a consortium led by Google that develops the Android (operating system), Android mobile operating system. Its member firms included HTC, Sony, Dell, Intel, Motorola, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, Samsung Electr ...

platform Android (also its namesake) and licensed under the

Apache License The Apache License is a permissive free software license written by the Apache Software Foundation (ASF). It allows users to use the software for any purpose, to distribute it, to modify it, and to distribute modified versions of the software ...

. The fonts are intended for use on the small screens of mobile handsets and were designed by

Steve Matteson Steven R. Matteson (born 1965) is an American typeface designer whose work is included in several computer operating systems and embedded in game consoles, cell phones and other electronic devices. He is the designer of the Microsoft font family ...

of Ascender Corporation.

Examples

Image:DroidSerifSpecimen.svg, Droid Serif Image:DroidSansSpecimen.svg, Droid Sans* Image:DroidSansMonoSpecimen.svg, Droid Sans Mono * Unlike other sans fonts, the capital letter I retains its serifs, which is also present in Noto Sans.

Typefaces

The Droid font family consists of Droid Sans, Droid Sans Mono and Droid

Serif In typography, a serif () is a small line or stroke regularly attached to the end of a larger stroke in a letter or symbol within a particular font or family of fonts. A typeface or "font family" making use of serifs is called a serif typeface ( ...

: *The Droid Sans typeface features Regular and Bold weights. The regular weight includes support for simplified and

traditional Chinese A tradition is a system of beliefs or behaviors (folk custom) passed down within a group of people or society with symbolic meaning or special significance with origins in the past. A component of cultural expressions and folklore, common examp ...

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

Korean Korean may refer to: People and culture * Koreans, people from the Korean peninsula or of Korean descent * Korean culture * Korean language **Korean alphabet, known as Hangul or Korean **Korean dialects **See also: North–South differences in t ...

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

Armenian Armenian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Armenia, a country in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia * Armenians, the national people of Armenia, or people of Armenian descent ** Armenian diaspora, Armenian communities around the ...

, Ethiopic, Georgian,

Hebrew Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...

, and Thai support for the GB2312, Big 5, JIS X0208 and KSC 5601 character sets respectively which the design style for all the Ideographs are using the Simplified Chinese writing style. There is no italic variant of Droid Sans; italics would be synthesized by Android by generating an

oblique Oblique may refer to: * an alternative name for the character usually called a slash (punctuation) ( / ) *Oblique angle, in geometry * Oblique triangle, in geometry * Oblique lattice, in geometry * Oblique leaf base, a characteristic shape of the ...

form in order to save storage space. However, it is present in the fonts

Open Sans Open Sans is an open source humanist sans-serif typeface that was designed by Steve Matteson under commission from Google. It was released in 2011 and is based on his earlier design called Droid Sans, which was specifically created for Android ...

and Noto Sans. Known variations include: :*Droid Sans Arabic egularavailable from Google Fonts API :*Droid Sans Armenian old and Regularavailable from Google Fonts API :*Droid Sans Devanagari egularavailable from Google Fonts API :*Droid Sans Georgian egularavailable from Google Fonts API :*Droid Sans Hangul egularavailable from Google Code :*Droid Sans Hebrew old and Regularavailable from Google Fonts API :*Droid Sans Japanese egularavailable from Google Fonts API or Github :*Droid Sans SEMC egularavailable from Nokia Website :*Droid Sans SEMC CJK egularavailable from HTC website :*Droid Sans Subset old and Regularembedded font in Google Docs :*Droid Sans Tamil old and Regularavailable from Google Fonts API :*Droid Sans Thai egularavailable from Google Fonts API *Droid Sans Fallback font could be found on other language rich websites, especially those with Hindi or Khmer language support, are listed below: :*Droid Sans Fallback Full egularavailable from Google Fonts API :*Droid Sans Fallback Fan Dal egularavailable from Google Code China :*Droid Sans Fallback HTC egularavailable from HTC website :*Droid Sans Fallback Indic egularfont support for Hindi, Devanagari, Kannada, Bengali, Oriya, Malayalam, Telugu, Tamil and Punjabi languages :*Droid Sans Fallback Khmer egularfont support for the Khmer language :*Droid Sans Fallback Legacy egularavailable from Google Fonts API :*Droid Sans Fallback QVGA egularfont support for old VGA based systems *Designed by Steve Matteson and Terrance Weinzierl of

Monotype Imaging Monotype Imaging Holdings Inc., founded as Lanston Monotype Machine Company in 1887 in Philadelphia by Tolbert Lanston, is an American (historically Anglo-American) company that specializes in digital typesetting and typeface design for use wit ...

, Droid Sans Mono consists of only the Regular font. The design is similar to Matteson's closed source

Andalé Mono Andalé Mono (for technical reasons also Andale Mono) is a monospaced sans-serif typeface designed by Steve Matteson for terminal emulation and software development environments, originally for the Taligent project by Apple Inc. and IBM. Andalé M ...

typeface design. Taking advantage of the license under which the original typefaces were released, modifications of this Droid Sans Mono have appeared on the internet. Of particular note are those modifications that replace the plain zero

glyph A glyph ( ) is any kind of purposeful mark. In typography, a glyph is "the specific shape, design, or representation of a character". It is a particular graphical representation, in a particular typeface, of an element of written language. A ...

with dotted or slashed versions. Such modifications are particularly desired by users making heavy use of

monospaced A monospaced font, also called a fixed-pitch, fixed-width, or non-proportional font, is a font whose letters and characters each occupy the same amount of horizontal space. This contrasts with Typeface#Proportion, variable-width fonts, where t ...

typefaces, including

software developers A programmer, computer programmer or coder is an author of computer source code someone with skill in computer programming. The professional titles Software development, ''software developer'' and Software engineering, ''software engineer' ...

, because they provide a more prominent differentiation between the two characters. They include: :*Droid Sans Mono Dotted ith dotted zeros:*Droid Sans Mono Slashed ith slashed zeros:*Droid Sans Mono Py

Python programming language Python is a high-level, general-purpose programming language. Its design philosophy emphasizes code readability with the use of significant indentation. Python is dynamically type-checked and garbage-collected. It supports multiple prog ...

, with adjacent underscores separated">Underscore">underscores separated *The Droid Serif typeface consists of Regular, Bold, Italic, and Bold Italic styles. Other variations of the Droid Serif font includes: :*Droid Serif Subset egularembedded font in Google Docs :*Droid Serif Thai old and Regularavailable from Google Fonts API Each typeface has an extensive character set including coverage of Western European, Eastern/Central European,

Baltic Baltic may refer to: Peoples and languages *Baltic languages, a subfamily of Indo-European languages, including Lithuanian, Latvian and extinct Old Prussian *Balts (or Baltic peoples), ethnic groups speaking the Baltic languages and/or originatin ...

Cyrillic The Cyrillic script ( ) is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking countries in Southeastern Europe, Ea ...

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

and Turkish languages.

Replacement of Droid Sans with Roboto

Droid Sans was designed for the low-resolution displays of the very early Android devices and did not display well in larger, higher-resolution displays of later models. With the release of Android 4.0 "Ice Cream Sandwich" in 2011, Droid Sans was replaced with

Roboto Roboto () is a typeface family developed by Google. The first typeface was created as the system font for its Android (operating system), Android operating system, and released in 2011 for Android Ice Cream Sandwich, Android 4.0 "Ice Cream Sa ...

as the default typeface.

Droid Pro (2009)

On 12 February 2009, Ascender Corporation announced the retail version of the Droid fonts under the Droid Pro family. The fonts were sold in

OpenType OpenType is a format for scalable computer fonts. Derived from TrueType, it retains TrueType's basic structure but adds many intricate data structures for describing typographic behavior. OpenType is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corpora ...

and

TrueType TrueType is an Computer font#Outline fonts, outline font standardization, standard developed by Apple Inc., Apple in the late 1980s as a competitor to Adobe Inc., Adobe's PostScript fonts#Type 1, Type 1 fonts used in PostScript. It has become the ...

font format. The Droid Pro family consists of Droid Sans Pro (Regular, Bold), Droid Sans Pro Condensed (Regular, Bold), Droid Sans Pro Mono (Regular, Bold), Droid Serif Pro (Regular, Italic, Bold, Bold Italic), Droid Sans Fallback. Initial releases include Droid Sans Pro, Droid Serif Pro. OpenType features include Old Style Figures, as well as dotted and plain variants of the zero glyph for Droid Sans Pro Mono (the default zero is slashed). Droid Sans Pro Mono went on sale on 31 July 2009.

Handset Condensed (2010)

Handset Condensed is a condensed version of Droid Sans Pro designed by Ascender Corp's Steve Matteson and released on 1 March 2013 to be compatible with the Droid family of fonts, but without OpenType features. Similar to Droid Sans Pro, the family includes two fonts in Bold and Regular weights without italics. It supports the WGL character set.

Droid Arabic Kufi and Droid Arabic Naskh

In 2009, Ascender Corporation designed specially customed fonts for Google Fonts API as language support for the Arabic and Persian languages. The fonts that were released are available at the Google Fonts website and are Droid Arabic Naskh oth Bold and Regular weightsand Droid Arabic Kufi oth Bold and Regular weights Other variations that were found until recently includes the Droid Persian Naskh, a specific font for the Persian Farsi language distributed by Open Font Library in May 2014.

Special Droid typefaces in Android phones

In some Android smartphones that uses Android 4.2 Jellybean, the following fonts have been found in the phone's "/system/fonts" folder. The fonts include: * Droid Naskh Shift Alt font found only in Android phones supporting the Arabic, Urdu, Uighur and Farsi languages* Droid Naskh Shift font found only in Android phones supporting the Arabic, Urdu, Uighur and Farsi language calligraphies* Droid Naskh System UI system font found only in Android phones supporting the Arabic and Farsi languages* Droid Naskh UI system font found only in Android phones supporting the Arabic and Farsi language calligraphies Other variations of the Droid font that aimed to depict the Android 'robot' image logo include roid Robot Regular fontand roid Robot Japanese Regular font – for Japanese language support Aims by specific language font designers to adapt fonts for particular Southern Asian languages include Droid Hindi upport for the Hindi language Droid Telugu upport for the Telugu languageand Droid India upport for the Indian languages all over India These fonts could be found on GitHub or in the XDA Developers forum for Android smartphones.

References

External links

Ascender Corporation Droid font page
*29arabicletters page
Droid Naskh (custom)Droid Naskh (retail)
*Google Web Fonts page
Droid Naskhthai-droidsans

Fonts in the GitHub mirror of the Android repositoryThe Cosmix.org Slashed and Dotted zero modified versions of Droid Sans Mono
{{DEFAULTSORT:Droid (Font) Unified serif and sans-serif typeface families Monospaced typefaces Free software Unicode typefaces Open-source typefaces Android (operating system) Typefaces and fonts introduced in 2007 Typefaces designed by Steve Matteson Humanist sans-serif typefaces Arabic typefaces Hebrew typefaces Devanagari typefaces Latin-script typefaces Greek typefaces Cyrillic typefaces CJK typefaces