Ecofont: Think Before you Ink

Our "little find with big implications" of the day...

While trekking through Trendmarketeer, we found a post about Ecofont, the brainchild of Collin Willems of Dutch design firm, SPRANQ. Ecofont is born from the consideration that, yes, we not only use too much paper but also too much ink. Experimenting with various minimizations, Willem's final design of the Ecofont (whose anatomy is shown above)  decreases dot density per letter by judicious insertion of circles, preserving legibility and readibility of text. SPRANQ estimates the font saves 20% on ink over traditional fonts. If it's true, as Michae Jahn claims on The Print CEO Blog, that newspapers pay up to $10,000 per month on ink, that 20% represents a substantial savings.

Here's the Ecofont. Based on the Vera Sans, an Open Source letter, the Ecofont is available for both PC and Mac. Pretty sweet.

Now the above does not quite do the font justice -- it appears much more crisp on both the screen and in print when used in MS Word, a more typical application.

The company is hoping to inspire both software designers and printer manufacturers. So spread the word....electronically, of course. And better yet, wantonly spread the font.

You can download the Ecofont for free from here.

Comments

[PAUL HETTINGER]

Notes on this great new font: 1...It looks pretty bad on the screen but it looks very normal when printed out. Try it! 2...The font is not unambiguous,
(like MOST fonts). The lower case "ell" is the identical character as the upper case "eye". Usually the correct character can be inferred from context, but not suitable for any sort of code or password. I give it 4.5 stars out of five. Paul Hettinger