Rod McDonald is the man who created the stock font on BlackBerry 10 devices, his own font being a typeface Slate Pro that all BlackBerry 10 devices are stocked up with. Being from Nova Scotia, BlackBerry had decisions to make as they already had a font from a company in the United States in mind.
Having talked to a few people in the company, when they were developing the Z10, they were casting about looking for typefaces for the interface, and as I understand it, they narrowed it down to two — mine and a typeface from a U.S. company, McDonald said.
Rod McDonald had a lot to say about the making of this unique font:
“When you’re working on anything visual like that, you need to see what it looks like when it’s actually printed on different presses on different papers, and likewise, when you’re developing a typeface for a computer, for a phone, you need to see how it works on that screen,” said McDonald
“Sometimes, a typeface can be a sort of reworking of a classic face from the 16th century or, like Slate, it was sort of made up. It was my own idea.”
BlackBerry has motivated, also inspired Rod McDonald to keep on pursuing his passion and exploring new ideas, he will continue to create unique fonts for years to come, even at age 66.
Who did BlackBerry chose for their stock font on BlackBerry 10? Rod McDonald’s.
And, in the end, they decided that Slate was the better typeface for their purposes.
Source: Herald Business