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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."
At big sizes the holes make it look horrible. At small sizes it's not all that readable as far as fonts go.
You might as well print at 80% grey instead of black to get the same savings and have it look better.
Tell you what, when you can come up with a better way to save 20% of the ink used on a printed document, then you can say it's stupid. Until then, I think it's a cleverly simple idea.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
I have a way to save 100%. Don't print it!
Yea, Light is so last century. It's all about the Eco now.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
What I meant is, they seem to have modified a screen font. If you are trying to save toner/ink, I would think that choosing a printed font would be more effective.
I know that you CAN print a sans-serif font, but I thought that the rule of thumb was that serif fonts should be used for print.
That said, I have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about - thus why I asked the question :)
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Ahhh... so, bonus points for @media print{body{font-family:Spranq Eco Sans;}}?
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
But for those that do need to be on paper, you can save 20% just by using a 10 point font instead of a 12 point font!
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
I have a much better one, change the quality settings in the printing dialog. There you have it ..
I doubt it will be less readable than that crap and it will also work for all fonts and images and so on ..
It works via dot gain (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot_gain), where ink tends to spread on paper. This happens with both inkjet and offset presses.
This would be much better implemented as part of the pre-press process of the publisher. The publisher could select all headlines, and apply a "holes" pattern much more specific to their press and their ink levels.
I don't know for you but for me 99.9% of the paper I consumed won't be readable in a year, because I will have thrown it away.
Text-files? I'm sure they will.
PDF? No idea.
In our University, printing used to be free until 2 years ago. Since the university started charging 3 cents per printout, the total number of printouts taken in computer labs has gone down by 70%. Perhaps your univ should try that out as well.
Face your daemons!
Sigh. As the various outraged typographers here attest, this is a self-promotional stunt and has nothing to do with innovation or even typography. The clue is the first line of TFA:
"Dutch marketing and communications company Spranq has come up with a novel and free way of slashing printer ink costs by developing a font with holes in it."
I work for a marcomms agency as well. This is how such agencies get clients: you pull stunts like this to make yourselves look like gurus in some way, so when you go in for pitches you have lots of press clippings (clients don't read them, they just look at where they were published) so you have some kind of differentiation over your rivals. I worked for a place where we made a big fanfare about recruiting an "artist in residence" (and got lots of press) - others in our space have launched "labs" or various kinds, etc. etc.
There's no substance in any of it. It's all just a marketing con-job and sad to say Slashdot has fallen for it (not that a marcomms agency's clients would be interested in a /. story anyway).
"And the meaning of words; when they cease to function; when will it start worrying you?"
An easier way to save ink AND paper is this: use a sans serif font that has 1/2 the stroke weight and print multipage documents at a smaller size. If the stroke thickness is normally, say, 150 units, make it something like 80. Use a large X height to add to readability. Then print at 10pt instead of 12. Massive savings, and no need to resort to swiss cheese fonts which will look like crapola over 12 pt. Word.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Looks interesting
No, looks like complete and utter crap.
And I say that as someone who encourages people to print in the most severe toner-saving mode their printer has; as someone who duplexes everything, often 4-up per side; someone who considers a 9pt font shamelessly wasteful for anything but a presentation-quality final result.
I also say it as someone who doesn't get all elitist about fonts (I happen to like Comic Sans, ThankYouVeryMuch), as long as they don't hurt to read.
And Spranq Eco Sans hurts to read. At large sizes, it looks like a billboard with all the lights out, and at small sizes it looks like someone ran it through the shredder and taped it back together. Just way too visually distracting to even consider.
First of all, the idea that everything required for the class should be included in the price of the class is ridiculous. Books aren't included. Neither are pens, paper, or laptops.
Second, what difference does it make whether you pay for your printing at the printer or in your tuition? Theoretically speaking, if nobody abused their printing privileges, the cost would average out and the cost to you would be the same either way.
However, if charging three cents at the printer reduces abuse, then you, as a student, actually save money. Even if you're one of the students that's abusing your printing privileges, you'd still save money because you don't have to pay for all the other students that are abusing their privileges. Putting all the cost in the tuition causes the tragedy of the commons.
My college actually charged nine cents per page; it was really no big deal. Although I'm curious if the GP meant three cents per page, or three cents per job. If it's per page, the 70% drop doesn't surprise me too much, but if it's per job, then that's pretty amazing.
The details are trivial and useless; The reasons, as always, purely human ones.
If you tested it on a laser printer is it very unlikely that the "ink" spread out to fill the holes. laser printers use toner.
I Need someone to rebuild a Digitech Digital Delay pedal for me....for me...for me...for me.
Mod parent interesting, insightful, and informative.
It seems counter-intuitive, but if we stopped using wood completely, then forested land would no longer be profitable! If that happened, people would just replace the forested land with something that is profitable, like housing developments or farms.
I agree that deforestation is a big problem, particularly in third-world countries, but reducing paper use could reduce reforestation, which would cause more harm than good.
I think it's more important that we focus on passing laws to protect natural habitats; when forced to, logging companies have no problems making the most with the land they own.
The details are trivial and useless; The reasons, as always, purely human ones.
Post script is 24 years old, I bet PDF keeps a similar track record.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Guess what: EVERYTHING you buy costs a fraction of its price to manufacture. If you don't like the price of inkjet printer cartridges, you are free to not buy inkjet printers. Printer manufacturers have found that people prefer buying cheap printers to buying expensive printers with cheap cartridges.
If you don't like the price of inkjet cartridges, you are more than welcome to buy laser printers, all of which are far cheaper to operate than inkjets. You can buy a laser printer for 50 bucks these days. Just stop whining and demanding government handouts, it's getting a little out of hand.