By now you have probably heard that recycled paper and soy inks
contribute to greener graphic design, but it turns out that in the
realm of sustainability, not all fonts are created equal. With that being said, Dutch communications company Spranq have jumped on the environmentally friendly bandwagon, with a font that looks like this:
Ecofont is the name of the typeface and it is available for free at this company's website. The idea is that these little holes will save on average 20% more ink, contributing to a cleaner environment.
The catch 22 here is that it really only works well for a font in the 10 pt size range. At this size and smaller the holes go unnoticed. But, as the font gets bigger the holes will obviously become larger, and at a smaller size the amount of the savings goes down, mostly because the holes will close up and become ineffective due to ink spread, etc.
This seems to be one of those inventive ideas that is a great tool to introduce the world to the services and ingenuity of this company in a roundabout viral episode, while playing on the environmental theme so prevalent in today's society. Whether or not it will help contribute to a cleaner earth seems unlikely, although with a little creativity from the end user, you may be able to trick yourself into sleeping easier at night knowing you're saving the world. Or maybe it will become all the rage like Courier did in the 90's.
- Todd
