Droid fonts
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| Category | Sans-serif, Serif, Monospace |
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| Designer(s) | Steve Matteson |
| Foundry | Ascender Corp. |
| License | Apache License |
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Droid is a font family first released in 2007[1] and created by Ascender Corporation for use by the Open Handset Alliance platform Android[2] 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 of Ascender Corporation. The name was derived from the Open Handset Alliance platform name Android.
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Examples [edit]
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Droid Serif
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Droid Sans
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Droid Sans Mono
Typefaces [edit]
The Droid font family consists of Droid Sans, Droid Sans Mono and Droid Serif:
- The Droid Sans typeface consists of Regular and Bold fonts. Droid Sans regular font includes support for Simplified and Traditional Chinese (albeit with some incorrect forms), Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Armenian, Ethiopic, Georgian, Hebrew, 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.
- The Droid Sans Mono typeface consists of only the Regular font. The design is similar to Matteson's closed source Andalé Mono 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 with dotted or slashed versions. Such modifications are particularly desired by users making heavy use of monospaced typefaces, including software developers, because they provide a more prominent differentiation between the two characters.
- The Droid Serif typeface consists of Regular, Bold, Italic and Bold Italic fonts.
Each typeface has an extensive character set including coverage of Western European, Eastern/Central European, Baltic, Cyrillic, Greek and Turkish languages.[3]
Droid Pro (2009) [edit]
In 12 February 2009, Ascender Corporation announced the retail version of the Droid fonts under the Droid Pro family.[4] The fonts were sold in OpenType and TrueType font format.
The planned 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.
Droid Sans Fallback is a font with CJK support.
Droid Sans Pro Mono went on sale beginning in 2009-07-31.
Handset Condensed (2010) [edit]
Released on 2010-03-01, it is a condensed version of Droid Sans Pro designed by Ascender Corp's Steve Matteson to be compatible with the Droid family of fonts, but without OpenType features.
The family includes 2 fonts in 2 weights (Regular, Bold) without italics. It supports WGL character set.
Droid Arabic Naskh & Kufi (2010) [edit]
Droid Arabic Naskh & Kufi were designed in 2010 for use in Google products.[5]
Droid Naskh is an Arabic type designed in 2010 by 29 Arabic Letters foundry in collaboration with Ascender Corporation, with Arabic letters designed by Pascal Zoghbi and Latin letters designed by Steve Matteson from Ascender. Designed to complement the Latin, Greek and Cyrillic provided in the Droid Serif family, the Arabic matches the color, alignment and design detail of the Droid Serif allowing them to be used together for multilingual typesetting. This Naskh style is optimized for reading Arabic script on screen.
Droid Kufi was initially designed by Steve Matteson with Pascal Zoghbi as consultant on the design and create the final version of the font.
Droid Naskh was first shipped with Android 4.0.
See also [edit]
References [edit]
- ^ http://www.ascendercorp.com/pr/2007-11-12/
- ^ Woyke, Elizabeth (September 26, 2008). "Android's Very Own Font". Forbes. Retrieved February 22, 2012.
- ^ Ascender creates the new Droid font collection for Open Handset Alliance's Android platform
- ^ DroidFonts.com and new Droid Pro fonts announced by Ascender
- ^ Droid Arabic Kufi & Naskh for Google™
External links [edit]
- Ascender Corporation Droid font page
- 29arabicletters page: Droid Naskh (custom) Droid Naskh (retail)
- Google Web Fonts page: Droid Naskh, thai-droidsans
- Fonts in the GitHub mirror of the Android repository
- The Cosmix.org Slashed and Dotted zero modified versions of Droid Sans Mono
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