Save money and go green just by changing fonts
I use fonts on the documents I create to evoke emotion. Big, bold fonts to grab attention. Straight, blocky fonts when referring to text on a computer screen. But I've never used a font to be environmentally friendly. Until now.
While reading through my RSS subscriptions yesterday, I stumbled upon a font called Econofont. Econofont is the result of a project by SPRANQ whose goal was to see how much of a letter can be removed while still maintaining readability.
According to the Econofont web site, the results were as follows: "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."
So if you feel like saving some toner and being friendly to the environment at the same time, check out Econofont. Your wallet and the environment will thank you.
2 comments for this blog post so far...
January 08, 2009 at 6:18 pm
Michelle Hartz
Neat idea, but I don’t get the result. I must be missing something. How is that using less ink than a font with just a black outline? In fact, I might challenge that there’s too much meat to these letters. For example, why does the ‘t’ need the bottom curve? And if the letters were more compressed, they would still be more readable, they would use less ink, and more text would fit on a page therefore using less paper.
This is just a gimmick I’m over-analyzing, isn’t it?
January 08, 2009 at 11:05 pm
Patric Welch
@Michelle Aw, why’d you have to go and suck all the fun out of it?
Oddly, enough I never thought about just using the outline of each letter. My guess is they were going for something that when printed looks as close to a normal font as possible while still saving ink. The image I used above is intentionally oversized. When you use the Econofont at 10 or 11 pt it’s harder to see the holes in the letters.
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