These days we are trying to reduce our ecological footprint in many areas of our life. When you think about how much printed text documents are being produced every minute and how much toner is being used in the process, it was only a matter of time until someone came up with an ecologically friendly font. A huge leap forward in this regard was the development of the Ecofont, a font that is specifically designed to save ink and toner created by the Utrect-based Spranq Creative Communications Agency.
The simple yet effective design was achieved by shooting open-source Vera Sans font full of holes. This way, when the font is printed, the area of coverage is smaller and so is the amount of used ink. Simply saving resources! The Dutch company who created the ecofriendly font claims: “After Dutch hole cheese, there now is a Dutch font with holes as well.” Ecofont shows how simple ideas, are often the best ones: With a small change of something so everyday and normal to many, a great impact can be made!
The first ecologically conscious typeface
When changing into using the Ecofont, the simple fact is that you will be saving ink and resources. Ecofont can possibly cut your ink usage by up to 15-20 percent, depending on the size of the font. The smaller the font, the smaller the savings. At 12pt or smaller the holes are hardly visible on paper as our brain ignores them. However, the bigger the font gets, the more the holes become visible. Well, then the question is, can the holes be made smaller in the larger font sizes? But this is something for the professionals to figure out.
You can save up to 20% ink with the Ecofont
The original Ecofont Vera Sans was develop as an alternative to the most commonly used Verdana typeface for office use, as this is the place where large numbers of text documents are printed daily for only short usage time. Since then Spranq has developed a software that can turn any font into an Ecofont including the serif fonts. The basic idea of riddling each type character with tiny holes is used in each font, of course, only up to a certain point in order to guarantee the legibility of the text.
The holes in the type are invisible when viewed with bare eyes, but seen when the font is enlarged
And after the brilliant idea, comes the second best part: The Ecofont Vera Sans is free for everyone to download, for any use they wish. This is something refreshing in the modern days when most things are made into a business. The software which edits any font into an Ecofont, is available on sale through their online store.
Spranq’s latest test shows 28% savings when comparing Arial with Ecofont Arial. In the future the savings could be even increased, reducing the ecological impact of printed matter even further. We will wait eagerly to see the new developments, but we are sure we are on the right path!
Photo source: Ecofont