Ecofont
Encyclopedia
Ecofont is a TrueType
font developed by SPRANQ in the Netherlands
. The font uses tiny circles placed in the characters to cut down on ink costs. It claims to cut down the amount of ink usage by approximately 15 percent. The free Ecofont is based on the Vera Sans font and is available on Windows, Mac OSX, and GNU/Linux; while the original Ecofont Vera Sans typeface is still free downloadable, the website also announces Ecofont Software, a printing solution for business environments, that provides printing ecofriendly in any typeface. SPRANQ "hopes to increase environmental awareness" through the Ecofont. Ecofont was nominated for the Accenture Innovation Award 2009 in the Netherlands in the category Green and has received the European Environmental Design Award 2010 from DiMAD in Spain in the category Graphic Design.
fonts. Therefore Ecofont developed software to save ink in any typeface including serif fonts. The actual design of the sans serif is less economic than serifs (fewer words per page than a normal typeface) and using holes in a glyph only works with bolder type, it is easier to save ink by using normal widths. The initial Ecofont Vera Sans was developed for office use to be an eco-friendly alternative for the often used Verdana typeface.
TrueType
TrueType is an outline font standard originally developed by Apple Computer in the late 1980s as a competitor to Adobe's Type 1 fonts used in PostScript...
font developed by SPRANQ in the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
. The font uses tiny circles placed in the characters to cut down on ink costs. It claims to cut down the amount of ink usage by approximately 15 percent. The free Ecofont is based on the Vera Sans font and is available on Windows, Mac OSX, and GNU/Linux; while the original Ecofont Vera Sans typeface is still free downloadable, the website also announces Ecofont Software, a printing solution for business environments, that provides printing ecofriendly in any typeface. SPRANQ "hopes to increase environmental awareness" through the Ecofont. Ecofont was nominated for the Accenture Innovation Award 2009 in the Netherlands in the category Green and has received the European Environmental Design Award 2010 from DiMAD in Spain in the category Graphic Design.
Saving tests
The results of a reproducible saving test with Arial and Ecofont Arial show savings of 28%.Criticisms
In a test, Ecofont Vera Sans saved 20% more ink when compared to Bitstream Vera Sans, but was less ink-friendly than most typical serifSerif
In typography, serifs are semi-structural details on the ends of some of the strokes that make up letters and symbols. A typeface with serifs is called a serif typeface . A typeface without serifs is called sans serif or sans-serif, from the French sans, meaning “without”...
fonts. Therefore Ecofont developed software to save ink in any typeface including serif fonts. The actual design of the sans serif is less economic than serifs (fewer words per page than a normal typeface) and using holes in a glyph only works with bolder type, it is easier to save ink by using normal widths. The initial Ecofont Vera Sans was developed for office use to be an eco-friendly alternative for the often used Verdana typeface.