New Font Uses Holes To Cut Ink Use

An anonymous reader writes "A Dutch company has taken an open source Sans Serif font and added holes to it to try and save on printer ink costs. The Ecofont is claimed to save up to 20 percent of ink costs, but it allegedly took the firm a while to perfect the ratio of the maximum number of holes possible without sacrificing readability."

Comments

This is pointless

[toby]

These people don't seem aware that typefaces are usually available in many weights.

You can save much more than this by simply changing to a lighter weight.

(I am a typographer. But it shouldn't take one to figure this out.)

Re:This is pointless

[SocialEngineer]

It used to be argued that serif fonts were more readable than sans in print, but recent studies have shown that it likely isn't the case. Things like x-height, width, weight, letter spacing, etc have more bearing than serif or not. (I work at a newspaper that still has a print following, and also do independent design).

Horrible on screen

[F�an�ro]

Looks absolutely horrible on screen, fuzzy and irregular letters at lower font sizes.

And at bigger sizes the holes themselves start to look jagged.

does that improve in print?

Re:Horrible on screen

[Galaga88]

I printed off a quick test to an HP LaserJet 4100 from Word 2007 in WinXP, and it looks a lot better in print than on screen. 10 & 11 point being where it looks best. You can still see the holes, but they're not as glaringly obvious or jagged as when displayed on screen.

Re:What a fucking stupid idea!

[Firehed]

Paper trees are always re-planted after being cut down (it would get unsustainable very quickly if this didn't happen) - and generally also have a lot of recycled material in the final product. The tree-cutting damage comes from the food industry clearing the way for beef cows or corn crops.

Never mind how insanely expensive ink is. The wasted ink is by far worse than the wasted paper. If you want to save a few sheets, shrink your print margins; either way, there's really no net gain or loss in trees.

Re:What a fucking stupid idea!

[York the Mysterious]

Coming from a University that bought 10 pallets a year of paper and a truck load of toner, it's a big cost. Switching fonts to save 20% would be a very nice savings.

Re:I agree many things don't need to be printed

[EventHorizon_pc]

12 point font means the font's vertical size is 12/72in = 1/6th of an inch.

Keeping a constant aspect ratio, the ink savings would be (12*12-10*10)/12*12 = 30.56%

For 20%, sqrt(.8)*12 = 10.73pt font. He was underestimating! ... and yet, no one cares....

Re:What a fucking stupid idea!

[mosb1000]

Deforestation is almost exclusively the result of agricultural expansion. It makes no sense to say that saving paper = saving forests.

Here is what Wikipedia has to say about the matter:

In simple terms deforestation occurs because forested land is not economically viable. Increasing the amount of farmland, wood extraction and, infrastructure expansion are all important factors in driving deforestation in different regions with mining also an important cause. There is considerable interplay between these factors. For example logging(wood extraction) or mining requires roads to transport the timber(infrastructure expansion) and farmers use these roads to move into previously unreachable areas of forest (agricultural expansion). The ultimate cause of most deforestation is increased food production. Cattle, permanent crops, shifting cultivation and colonization are all equally important to global tropical deforestation

Even when deforestation is the result of lumber harvesting activities, it is primarily because the roads used to access the lumber make it easier for farmers to move in and use the land.

While forest area is on the decline in the US, it is due to urbanization, not timber harvesting activities (the same article discusses this).