I heard about this on NPR this morning and think it very much something worth sharing. It’s ‘EcoFont’ and it’s a font aimed at saving ink.
Appealing ideas are often simple: how much of a letter can be removed while maintaining readability? After extensive testing with all kinds of shapes, the best results were achieved using small circles. After lots of late hours (and coffee) this resulted in a font that uses up to 20% less ink. Free to download, free to use.
The Dell printer I have sucks up ink like nobody’s business. (And, annoyingly, every time you put in a new ink cartridge it does an alignment print which wastes loads of ink). So, besides being an environmentally friendlier font, maybe ecofont really will save me money, which I can then spend on important things like books.
I’ve some problems: 1) it doesn’t understand Greek or Hebrew signs 2) it’s using more inkt as using an other (normal) font with “quick printing” (I’ve a Brother MFC890), using this font with “quick printing” I can’t read the text anymore.
But I agree, it could be useful for some printers which don’t have the ability for “quick printing”
By: JPvdGiessen on January 2, 2009
at 9:11 am
It would be useful if they had an italic type available. I suppose asking for a bold type as well would not be so eco-friendly!
By: Jeremy on January 2, 2009
at 2:15 pm
I find that changing the colour of all my text to a shade of gray has the same result without limiting the fonts I can use. Or use US spelling which results in saving on those extra letters in words like “colour”!
By: Martin Shields on January 2, 2009
at 5:10 pm