I love the way they "debunk" Century Gothic...

http://www.ecofont.com/en/products/green/printing/saving-printing-costs-...

...Classic!

It's 110% bollocks. There are ways to be eco-friendly, but that is not one of them.

Agreed. This is just a marketing fuzz.

Talking about eco-friendly policies, since many years I suggest to set monochromatic laser printers to use Black at 90% (instead of 100%). To office usage this produces a rather good result with relevant economy. In the Tribunal where I work they are adopting this (and also using just recycled paper).

Is it just me or are there not even close-up photos of the printouts on the website?

This came up before:
There's a hole in my typeface, dear Vera, dear Vera
Ecofont
Ecofont - Put holes in your fonts to save ink
Ecofont evaluation?

This is good satire.

Hmm not something I would spend y money on. Better and more effective ways of being eco friendly.

The latest issue of AARP Bulletin includes the switcheroo in a list of 99 ways to save money...

In the spirit of Ecofont, we at H&FJ are spearheading an eight-point plan to promote more ecologically sound typography. We welcome the contributions of other companies and individuals interested in supporting this important initiative.

KEY GOALS:

1 - 20% reduction in the use of heavy-ink letters M and W by 2030

2 - Two-part plan for gradual phase out of dots over i, j

3 - Tax incentive for households limiting their vocabularies to words of six or fewer letters

4 - Requirement that all government forms be tracked -200

5 - "Print" command on home computers to require two users to simultaneously insert and turn special keys

6 - Reduction of highway signs to maximum size of 8-1/2" x 11"

7 - Illegalization of circulars and take-out menus, with three-strikes rule and death penalty in most states

8 - National campaign to ration serifs and collect them to help beat the kaiser

With your support, we can help the energy, mining, transport and agriculture industries address their number one environmental problem, which is poor font selection.

Yours,

Steve Gibbs
Chief Strategy Officer
Dept. of Green and Greenish Typography
Hoefler & Frere-Jones

A recent newspaper ad for Audi featured a font with holes in it, a metaphor for the "green" construction of their lightweight automobile.

This creative gem was full page, featuring acres (metaphorically) of white space. (Well, grey space anyway, it was after all newsprint.)

When I started Earthmark, an environmental marketing company, in 1989, one of our promises was to help reduce clients' environmental footprint, by means of expertise in producing powerful small advertisements and brochures. That was probably one of the reasons for Earthmark's demise -- there's no glory in small ads for product managers, agencies, or creatives, regardless of their efficacy in shifting product.

As long as print marketing continues to rely on cheap size for impact, "saving the environment" by using less ink on a percentage basis is irrelevant.

In the world at large, pollution of all kinds has proceeded because industry standards are based on risk assessment tied to percentage concentrations, rather than capping toxic emissions to the finite nature of the physical environment.

In graphics, the high resolution of the digital workflow has arguably produced the most benefit to the environment, by enabling smaller documents. Newspaper rolls have been steadily decreasing in width, and newspapers in size, with the decline of that industry.

Increased resolution enables a downsizing of paper-size standards in general, such as has already happened in the newspaper business. (This process has been going on in garment industry dress sizes for many years).

It is time to shrink A4 etc., and 8 1/2" x 11".

For environmental concerns, I've always preferred Erik Spiekermann's FF Mt (available here.)

"Employing obscure but powerful techniques like vwl mmssn and cap reduction, FF Mt uses up to 50% less paper, screen, and wall space than other text faces without a single condensed letter."

Good overview over ink use... pen on a board drawing typefaces

ugh. we should all do our part, blah blah blah. so recycle your car.

Save gas, burn cars!

Some time ago, after I saw that funny ink test made with pen, I did myself some comparison about ink coverage. Just for fun and curiosity.

My method:
1. I set an article with 16 pages in InDesign with each of the fonts.
2. Edited font size to match text extension.
3. Exported each article to PDF.
4. In Photoshop, imported these PDFs and rasterized them in 1200dpi.
5. Did a histogram measure about back/white dots, considering the 127 level the mid-cut.
6. Made arithmetical medias for all pages of each font usage to get an ink coverage.

Results:
Font...............Size....Ink coverage
Adobe Caslon.......10.25...10.51%
Garamond BE.........9.85...10.78%
My project..........9.45...11.27%
Minion Pro.........10.25...11.53%
Times New Roman....10.10...11.57%
Baskerville BE.....10.15...11.91%
Utopia..............9.50...12.10%
Guardian Text.......8.60...12.45%
Meta Serif..........9.50...12.82%


Jonathan: In the spirit of Ecofont, we at H&FJ are spearheading an eight-point plan...

For a minute I thought you were going to recommend setting everything in 8pt.

@Hoefler — Jonathan, that was hilarious!

@John Hudson — Ha! 8-point Retina, naturally.

>What do you guys think of it?

They shoot holes in fonts to save toner, good for them.

But the holer-thing should be in the printer's software so no one has to change fonts, much less argue about which font's best with holes shot in it.

>Is it possible not to affect legibility?

Sure. We only read around 1/45th of all the pixels printed.

>I think people are just going crazy with this eco-friendly thing.

Not me. But I am experimenting with a new formula for dill pixels.

Cheers!

What David said. Hack the printer driver and add a mode that drills holes in a pleasing Gaussian way.

@ hoefler, 4 - Requirement that all government forms be tracked -200

and all public tender contract documents be printed with invisible ink (i.e. no ink). (nobody reads that stuff anyhow).

The worse is that some major organs here in Brazil such as Brazilian Solicitor-General's Office are adopting it.

I guess somebody will have to tell them that they are making it difficult for hoefler's goal number 4.

This is a good way of saving paper & ink (and ofcourse money!)

Economica by Vicente Lamónaca:
http://tipografia-montevideo.info/wp/?page_id=812

Smaller fonts with more conventional proportions are easier to read than narrow fonts, no? I'm not a lab coated font scientist but I believe that to be true. If the goal is squeezing in more text on the page, go smaller and use type designed for small print. Save vertical space too. Those old, tiny pocket bibles had type designed for ridiculously small point sizes. I'm not against the concept of the eco font, but I don't see how compressed type is easier to read than smaller type. I haven't read a bible for more than 3 seconds so I'm just assuming that they're easy to read. I do know that they're tiny and employ special bible fonts which I haven't seen anywhere outside of a bible.