Droid is a

font family A typeface (or font family) is the design of lettering that can include variations in size, weight (e.g. bold), slope (e.g. italic), width (e.g. condensed), and so on. Each of these variations of the typeface is a font. There are thousands o ...

first released in 2007 and created by

Ascender Corporation Ascender Corporation was a digital typeface foundry and software development company located in the Chicago suburb of Elk Grove Village, Illinois in the United States. It was founded in 2004 by a team of software developers, typographers, and font ...

for use by the

Open Handset Alliance The Open Handset Alliance (OHA) is a consortium of 84 firms to develop open standards for mobile devices. Member firms include HTC, Sony, Dell, Intel, Motorola, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, Google, Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics, T-Mobile, ...

platform Android and licensed under the Apache License. The fonts are intended for use on the small screens of mobile handsets and were designed by

Steve Matteson Steven R. Matteson (born 1965, Chicago, Illinois) 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 Micr ...

. The name was derived from the Open Handset Alliance platform named Android.

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 Mono may refer to: Common meanings * Infectious mononucleosis, "the kissing disease" * Monaural, monophonic sound reproduction, often shortened to mono * Mono-, a numerical prefix representing anything single Music Performers * Mono (Japanese b ...

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 In typography, emphasis is the strengthening of words in a text with a font in a different style from the rest of the text, to highlight them. It is the equivalent of prosody stress in speech. Methods and use The most common methods in W ...

weights. The regular weight includes support for simplified and

traditional Chinese A tradition is a belief or behavior (folk custom) passed down within a group or society with symbolic meaning or special significance with origins in the past. A component of cultural expressions and folklore, common examples include holidays or ...

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, ethnic group originating in the Korean Peninsula * Korean cuisine * Korean culture * Korean language **Korean alphabet, known as Hangul or Chosŏn'gŭl **Korean dialects and the Jeju language ** ...

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...

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 across the ...

, Ethiopic,

Georgian Georgian may refer to: Common meanings * Anything related to, or originating from Georgia (country) ** Georgians, an indigenous Caucasian ethnic group ** Georgian language, a Kartvelian language spoken by Georgians **Georgian scripts, three scrip ...

Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...

, and

Thai Thai or THAI may refer to: * Of or from Thailand, a country in Southeast Asia ** Thai people, the dominant ethnic group of Thailand ** Thai language, a Tai-Kadai language spoken mainly in and around Thailand *** Thai script *** Thai (Unicode block ...

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 b ...

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 designed by Steve Matteson, commissioned by Google and released in 2011. It is based on his previous Droid Sans design, designed for Android mobile devices, but slightly wider. Featuring ...

and Noto Sans. Known variations include: :*Droid Sans Arabic egularavailable from Google Fonts API :*Droid Sans Armenian

old and Regular Old or OLD may refer to: Places * Old, Baranya, Hungary * Old, Northamptonshire, England *Old Street station, a railway and tube station in London (station code OLD) *OLD, IATA code for Old Town Municipal Airport and Seaplane Base, Old Town, ...

available 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

available 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

embedded font in Google Docs :*Droid Sans Tamil

available 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, 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 ...

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 g ...

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 variable-width fonts, where the letters and spac ...

typefaces, including

software developers A computer programmer, sometimes referred to as a software developer, a software engineer, a programmer or a coder, is a person who creates computer programs — often for larger computer software. A programmer is someone who writes/creates ...

, 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 The Ith () is a ridge in Germany's Central Uplands which is up to 439 m high. It lies about 40 km southwest of Hanover and, at 22 kilometres, is the longest line of crags in North Germany. Geography Location The Ith is immediatel ...

:*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-typed and garbage-collected. It supports multiple programming p ...

, with adjacent underscores separated] *The Droid Serif typeface consists of Regular, Bold, Italic type, Italic, and Bold Italic styles. Other variations of the Droid Serif font includes: :*Droid Serif Subset egularembedded font in Google Docs :*Droid Serif Thai

available 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 originati ...

Cyrillic , bg, кирилица , mk, кирилица , russian: кириллица , sr, ћирилица, uk, кирилиця , fam1 = Egyptian hieroglyphs , fam2 = Proto-Sinaitic , fam3 = Phoenician , fam4 = G ...

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece 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 ...

and

Turkish Turkish may refer to: *a Turkic language spoken by the Turks * of or about Turkey ** Turkish language *** Turkish alphabet ** Turkish people, a Turkic ethnic group and nation *** Turkish citizen, a citizen of Turkey *** Turkish communities and mi ...

languages.

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. It was built on its predecessor TrueType, retaining TrueType's basic structure and adding many intricate data structures for prescribing typographic behavior. OpenType is a registered trademark o ...

and

TrueType TrueType is an outline font standard developed by Apple in the late 1980s as a competitor to Adobe's Type 1 fonts used in PostScript. It has become the most common format for fonts on the classic Mac OS, macOS, and Microsoft Windows operating sy ...

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 font Roids is an abbreviated form in popular usage and may refer to: * Anabolic steroids (AAS), drugs that have similar effects to testosterone in the body ** Roid rage, a side effect of AAS * Hemorrhoid Hemorrhoids (or haemorrhoids), also know ...

and 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 Android (operating system) Typefaces and fonts introduced in 2007 Typefaces designed by Steve Matteson Humanist sans-serif typefaces Latin-script typefaces Greek typefaces Cyrillic typefaces CJK typefaces