Ecofont

Now I know the world has gone stark raving mad:

The prints we make for our 'daily use' not only use paper, but also ink. According to SPRANQ creative communications (Utrecht, The Netherlands) your ink cartridges(ortoner) could last longer. SPRANQ has therefore developed a new font: the Ecofont.

And it's got holes in it. To save ink. I'm speechless.

And in case any of you wanted to see what it looks like, here's a sample.

Nice eh? Typography is never going to be the same again.

Comments

[TDK]

It's just like dot matrix

http://www.free-fonts.com/font/dot_matrix.html

[Jack Hughes]

Going backwards is the new forwards.

[Steve2]

The technology to actually think about laying down ink at that fine level, shows human ingenuity at its best.
I like it since it shows that if you ask the question “Are you really interested in working towards the future sustainability of humans?” then the only answer is that you should pay more attention to the nerdish improvements of engineers rather than the bleatings of a failed politician, actor or over wrought novelist.

Basically Moores law is one of the best examples of the un-acknowledged eco - economy fighting side -effect of human intellect (and yes it beats Jevons law of over-use)

[Alex Cull]

There are still too many dark bits to make that font truly eco-friendly. What people need to do is obviously use a white-coloured type on a white background for maximum reduction of their ink footprint. True, it would make text impossible to read, but with the type of thing likely to be written in Ecofont, would that matter?

[Lanna]

For our 'daily use' printing, which I take to mean stuff like worksheets for the kids, recipes, lyrics, whatever, there's already the sh*t print quality setting..and the ecofont will apparently only work in size 9 or 10. And obviously only for documents I create myself. I guess other people must be more prolific than I am...

[harold]

Using less ink makes sense to me, ceteris paribum. Xerox has developed a "disappearing ink'.

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article2588489.ece

[Alex Cull]

I like the disappearing ink idea - you could download and print a personalised newspaper first thing in the morning, sit and read it over breakfast, take it with you on the Tube and then bring back the blank sheet in the evening to be reused the next day (if it didn't get too crumpled.)

(Maybe I was bit harsh on Ecofont, in my previous comment. After all, it's about saving ink, which is not a bad idea in itself, given the price of ink cartridges. The "eco" prefix is always rather annoying though, I find.)

[The North Briton]

I don't know what they're talking about, my inkjet printer printed 'eco' anyway by this logic. So eco that I threw it in the bin actually.

And the beautiful irony is that the more this typeface appears on computer screens, the more energy is wasted lighting up the white holes in the otherwise black type. Anyone remember Blackle?

[Alex Cull]

Yes, I remember something about Blackle a few years back, apparently saved (a bit of) energy with older monitors but not for LCD ones. I just had a look for it on the net and found there are also grey, green, blue and pink search pages, but my head started to spin, so think I'll just stick to the normal Google. My search also revealed something called keepglobe.com, which purports to be a search site on "a server that is powered by wind and sun energy" (the keepglobe page didn't load, so maybe it's a very calm dark night where the server is. Renewables, eh.)

[James P]

If manufacturers really wanted us to spend less on ink, they'd make it easier to refill the cartridges. I'm not sure that ink is really a major threat to the planet, although the cartridges might be, in which case this might be the answer: http://www.continuousink.com/

[jorge kafkazar]

Postmodernist ecolunacy. The ideal font for publications of the Ministry of Truth.

[Canon Ink Cartridges]

It's a fantastic blog.
Thanks.

[printer cartridges]

Its a nice blog about ink printer cartridges.
Thanks.