Free eco-friendly font saves ink and toner Ecological consciousness is taking a leap forward with the release of Ecofont, a TrueType font designed to save ink and toner, by the Utrect-based Spranq creative communications agency Spranq achieved Ecofont's resource-saving magic by shooting the open-source Vera Sans font full of holes. As the company's website claimed: " …
1. I'm sure that on a laser or inkjet printer, this is going to look pale if printed using 'draft' quality. So in the end there'll be no saving since you'll have to beef up the quality setting.
2. And will it scan or photo-copy OK?
3. Oh, on screen it will use *more* energy because white takes more energy to display than black (which is, after all, absence of white). Oops.
1. Depends what setting it's on; most default to "good quality" which uses more ink than is necessary anyway. Easiest way is to actually try it.
2. At large sizes it'll be fine but at slightly smaller sizes (10pt and below) it'll be nasty. Then again 10pt laser print doesn't always copy *that* well either.
3. On a CRT monitor, definitely that's the case.
But on an LCD screen I'm not so sure that is true. A screen that is all black versus a screen that is off does have a visible hue to it on every LCD monitor I've ever seen, so the energy different there is actually going to be pretty minimal. (I'm sure there's a cue there for a Reg Hardware study somewhere)
@ Retrotech
Good old dot matrix printers. Not sure about the life expectancy of the ink ribbon though in terms of the number of pages versus a laser/inkjet printer.
If you have an old CRT monitor, you might be right about black using less power.
If you have an LCD, the backlight will be using power for both the black and white pixels (I am ignoring the backlight dimming features Intel has been developing on the assumption that you'll have both high and low intensity pixels close together with text). While there is an absence of light for black pixels, you'll see an increase in heat output.
Furthermore, energy must be expended to change an LCD from its steady state. So you might find that black pixels actually use more power ...
Print 20% lighter, so using 20% less toner. Who needs special holey fonts?
On an LCD the backlight stays constant and pixels are in various states of on, off or something between. As the backlight uses most of the power of an LCD screen, then reducing the power used by the pixels is irrelevant.
P.S. Why are some of the icons missing in IE8?
Why not use a pen and paper and then save all the electricity for the computer and the monitor...??
You could save even more energy by writing in some wet sand with a stick.
Not only is it carbon neutral, it's also 100% reusable - just add some water and smooth out the sand again.
Might be a bit difficult to send memos to other people without a flat-bed truck.
Save the planet - give up bold face. Also use san serriffe fonts, clearly a waste of ink and toner. Also, think carefully about punctuation. Is that exclamation mark really necessary and wouldn't a full stop be sufficient? Colons and semi-colons should only be used in moderation and never where less extravagant punction would do.
Perhaps El Reg could do a survey on the most eco-friendly font. Something spindly and weey looking should do - and it would so much better fit the IT person's image.
Patent bullshit!
What's going to use more ink: War and Peace printed at 72pt, or printed at 10pt? (And what about the paper? It doesn't just grow on trees!).
Fractionally cutting down on printing is going to have a far bigger environmental impact than using this font.
A noble sentiment, to be sure. But fairly negligible in impact and propounded by idiots.
This only has an effect if you're printing Headline-sized stuff. Otherwise, you're better off using small fonts; you'll save on paper by doing so.
Anyway, I remember about 15 years ago some experiments with vegetable-based ink; it was eco-friendly because it was easier to recycle paper when this ink was used.
"From the same sort of mathematical illiterates who think TVs on standby are killing the planet."
Well wasted electricity certainly at this point in our history is causing excessive coal/oil/gas etc to be burnt. That 'burning process' pumps nasty crap into the atmosphere, which has the effect of killing some living organisms. Dont believe, stick your gob over your car exhaust pipe whilst its running for 20mins, then come back and discuss about these poisons not killing things. ... I wont expect your return, but the good thing will be less wasted air being used by a thick muppet who probably could do with a brain implant.
Aah, I remember those days - printing flyers on the old Epson Stylus 500, wanting to eek out the best value I could. For me, the solution was WordArt - rather than shoot holes in letters the have a handy hollow letter option and at medium size it was quite readable and cheap to print.
Reminds me of the campaign a few years ago to have fire engines lime green, because that is where the human eye is most sensitive. Turns out they're right, the eye is more sensitive in the green part of the spectrum because IT NEEDS TO BE. All the greenery in the world, adn we humans need to be able to tell it apart. Not much in the world is naturally red, so that which is really stands out. That is why we use the color for warnings, stoplights, and fire engines.
Another psuedo-science idiot.
If you want to save paper/toner, DON'T print. Many years ago the "paperless office" was put forth. Now we print more things than ever before. If everyone went back to carbon paper and typewriters, we would save more than a silly font full of holes. Besides, it makes NO difference on some (thermal) printers.
The "wasted energy" you're talking about is insignificant. Keeping your TV on standby helps prolong its lifespan. The more you turn it on and off the more the filtering caps wear down...guess what happens when they crap out? The whole lot gets scrapped instead of replacing the caps. Way to save the planet brainiac.
I installed and tested this font on my trusty old Win2k system, and TBH, it looks like total crap on the screen. At anything smaller than 16 point, the font is ugly. At 10 point, it's not really legible. When it goes to 48 or 72 points (where the holes can actually be seen), the holes aren't very regular in their shape or spacing and look like they were put there by a bored teenager between rounds of World Of Warcraft.
However, the font does print out rather well - the holes are much more precise, and the font is legible down to 8 pts.
So it prints fine, but nobody I know edits documents on a printer - most folks edit on a screen and this font is dog-ugly on the screen.
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