“How much of a letter can be removed while maintaining readability?”
This is the question that sparked Netherlands-based SPRANQ to create a greener way of using ink when printing. They’ve discovered that by having open circles in each letter where no ink is used you can save 20 percent of your ink usage with the font still appearing normal. The only catch is you have to print 9 - 11 point size; which you should be doing anyways to protect our tree resources. The company hopes that by downloading this slightly mutated san-serif font it will get people thinking about their printing habits and how they can improve them.
This is a great step in the right direction when it comes to tapping into a massive industry of waste. I would not even want to venture a guess as to how many pieces of paper whisk off the millions of offices printers every day. If we cut down even a shred of office (and home) printing dependencies, we have made quite the leap in conservation.
Download Ecofont (Version 2.00)
- Ecofont Download TFF
- Ecofont Download ZIP
January 6th, 2010 at 2:40 am
The free Ecofont typeface has been developed into Ecofont printing software with which you can print with the font of your choice and print that same font with holes. So now there is Arial, Verdana, Times New Roman, etcetera with holes.
Another big advantage is that the font invisibly gets converted on the background when clicked on the Ecofont-printbutton. So on screen you see the font you always see and only the print contains the (same font with) holes.
Besides that the Ecofont Free was hand made; for the Ecofont software they programmed a solution which puts the holes in the best place of every character. So the readability is maximum.
You can print a testpage via: http://www.ecofont.com/assets/docs/Ecofont_professional_testpage_dec2009.pdf
(Of course on this page they had to use the font with holes on screen as well in order to make it possible for you to print without having their software installed)