The Dutch have always been innovators in graphic design and
mindful of their environment, living in a below-sea-level country as they do. A
new “holey” font that seeks to reduce wasteful printing is the latest product
to merge these two worlds.
Introducing Ecofont, your average old Arial typeface tweaked
in such a way that can reduce ink use by 20 percent. Designed by the Dutch
marketing and communications agency Spranq, the idea sprang from agency
cofounder Colin Willems, who witnessed massive amounts of ink wasted every day
in the mundane printing habits of office workers everywhere.
Available for Windows, MAC, and Linux operating systems, the
font incorporates tiny holes in the letters to not only retain the visual
aspect, but to help reduce the ink used with your day-to-day printing.
According to a 2009 report on government printing released
by Lexmark and O’Keefe & Company, the U.S. Government alone spends $1.3
billion dollars printing every year, and almost a third, $440 million, is
complete waste. Federal workers print 30 pages every work day on average, 92%
of them admitting they print more than they need.
If people are paying attention to this sort of thing at all
(and most aren’t), they typically combat excessive ink use by printing in draft
mode or using smaller type. These help reduce overall output and consume less
ink. But most office workers don’t have any thoughts or time to spare for
considering the environmental impact of ink as they race to meet a deadline.
Here’s where Ecofont has some promise. The font can be
downloaded for free, dropped into your computer’s font folder, set as the
default, and bam! Less wasteful printing every time, without having to fuss
with anything.
While some critics have considered this “green” font the
greatest thing since Swiss cheese, the battle for simplistic ingenuity did not
come quick. For months, designers pounded pots of coffee and arranged letters
in all sorts of ways to help reduce ink consumption. Some of those failures include
using partial letters to save ink, or using a zebra-like pattern in the font to
cut out unnecessary inking.
Spranq co-founder Gerjon Zomer said that the light bulb went
off when designers realized that it is necessary to preserve the size and outline
of letters to keep them readable. Much like a kitchen knife with holes in it
keep down weight without hampering its slicing performance, Ecofont does the
same for typography and ink consumption.
This reporter decided that the only true way to write about
this font was to write in it. After downloading Ecofont from the website, I was
typing away in a euphoria of “green happiness,” and for the time being, wasting
even more ink by printing out documents in both Arial and the new font to
compare the differences.
Depending on your software, Ecofont holds its own when
displayed, much like draft mode and other ink conserving methods. However,
Gerjon Zomer himself will tell you that the font isn’t beautiful, but it is
adequate enough for personal use or internal use at a company. Their main goal:
to incorporate the font in business spending.
“We’re working hard on launching Ecofont Professional, but
we’ve already received over a hundred requests from government agencies and
NGOs all over the world,” Zomer told OhMyGov. “The Ecofont free version is used
by such organizations, but due to the fact we believe it’s not suited for use
in organizations we don’t keep record of this.”
The Ecofont is based off of the sans-serif font family
Verdana, a popular web font that’s similar to the ubiquitous Arial and used
widely in the business field. A little more time is needed to polish off a
truly professional look for primetime. Currently the company is inviting
developers to help improve the design.
Apart from English, French, German, Italian, and Portuguese
versions, Arabic and Hebrew versions are currently under development.
Download Ecofont here.