Droid

I released Droid on July 9, 1997, after spotting a narrow unicase lettering style on a clothing store sign while riding a streetcar along Queen Street East in Toronto. The concept stuck with me, and I turned it into a unicase typeface where each letterform blends uppercase and lowercase characteristics. The result was extremely narrow, closer in spirit to Compacta than to any traditional text face.

Droid was designed strictly as a display typeface. I envisioned it for short headlines or logos where its compressed structure would have visual impact, not for body text. I released only one style and once considered expanding it into a larger family, but I never followed through.

The name predated the Lucasfilm trademark and the Android operating system by several years. Around a decade later, when Google introduced their own Droid font, conflicts arose because my version was still installed on many systems. This sometimes caused unexpected substitutions in web browsers. To avoid further conflicts, I eventually renamed it Droid 1997 in later releases.

Droid was always free to use. On April 2024, I placed it in the public domain. It never achieved notable use in media or publishing, but it reflects the late 1990s revival of unicase design and my own interest in condensed display typography.