Roboto


Roboto is a neo-grotesque sans-serif typeface family developed by Google as the system font for its mobile operating system Android, and released in 2011 for Android 4.0 "Ice Cream Sandwich".
The entire font family has been licensed under the Apache license. In 2014, Roboto was redesigned for Android 5.0 "Lollipop".

Use

Roboto is the default font on Android, and since 2013, other Google services such as Google+, Google Play, YouTube, Google Maps, and Google Images.
In 2017 Roboto was used on the LCD countdown clocks of the New York City Subway's B Division lines.
Roboto Bold is the default font in Unreal Engine 4, and in Kodi. Roboto Condensed is used to display Information on European versions of Nintendo Switch packaging, including physical releases of games.

Development

The font was designed entirely in-house by Christian Robertson who previously had released an expanded Ubuntu-Title font through his personal type foundry Betatype. The font was officially made available for free download on January 12, 2012, on the newly launched Android Design website.
Compared to Android's previous system font, the humanist sans-serif Droid, Roboto belongs to the neo-grotesque genre of sans-serif typefaces. It includes Thin, Light, Regular, Medium, Bold and Black weights with matching oblique styles rather than true italics. It also includes condensed styles in Light, Regular and Bold, also with matching oblique designs.

Redesign

In 2014, Matias Duarte announced at Google I/O that Roboto was significantly redesigned for Android 5.0 "Lollipop". Punctuation marks and the tittles in the lowercase "i" and "j" were changed from square to rounded, and the entire typeface was made “slightly wider and rounder” with many changes in details.

Reception

Google developed the font to be "modern, yet approachable" and "emotional," but Roboto received mixed reviews on its release. Joshua Topolsky, Editor-In-Chief of technology news and media network The Verge, describes the font as "clean and modern, but not overly futuristic – not a science fiction font". However, typography commentator Stephen Coles of Typographica called the initial release of Roboto "a Four-headed Frankenfont", describing it as a "hodgepodge" of different typographic styles which do not work well together. Other type design professionals called out obvious errors in accented glyphs, while John Gruber called the font a "Helvetica ripoff".

Language support

Roboto supports Latin, Greek and Cyrillic scripts.
On Android, the Noto font is used for languages not supported by Roboto, including Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai and Hindi.

Derivatives

Roboto Slab

Roboto Slab is a slab serif font based on Roboto. It was introduced in March 2013, as the default font in Google's note-taking service Google Keep. It is available in four weights: thin, light, regular and bold. However, no oblique versions were released for it. In November 2019, the typeface was updated and added 5 new weights: Extra-Light, Medium, Semi-Bold, Extra-Bold and Black, and a variable font axis ranging from 100 to 900. It also was modified with some characteristics from the sans-serif Roboto and to slightly resemble most slab-serif typefaces, such as "R", "K", "k", "g", "C", "S", etc.

Roboto Mono

Roboto Mono is a monospace font based on Roboto. It is available in seven weights: thin, extra-light, light, regular, medium, semi-bold and bold, with oblique stylings for each weight.

Heebo

Heebo is an extension of Roboto that includes Hebrew characters.