Tuesday, February 10, 2009

An Eco Friendly Font

Every single day, we hear more and more about the words "green" or "eco friendly." This is obviously one of the hot topics of today, so what can designers do about it? Well, like I say in just about ever other post, designers solve problems. It is what we do best. This article makes me proud to be a designer!

A marketing firm from the Netherlands called SPRANQ has developed the Ecofont. Yes, an eco friendly font! Using this font, when printing, uses 20% less ink by the genius idea to cut tiny holes out of each letter to save the amount of ink used to print at the same time as maintaining the readability of the font. Hats off to them!

It is free to use and free to download, so I suggest you start using this font immediately. I just did! A preview of the font is below.

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3 comments:

  1. OK, now, you might have gone too far with this. I appreciate your attempt to finding a reason to write about designing on the green, but Josh, really?

    Where do these numbers come from? Where are the statistics to back those figures up? I have never sen this font before and I know why. Imagine that on a logo. Or on a business card. It will get harder to read the smaller you take it.

    The font is not browser safe so you can not use it on the web. (I know your response to that would be it is designed for print use). And you want to know the sad thing about this? People will buy into this. You already have. It has already started.

    People buy Hybrid cards because they are green. They carry the same bag over and over again to Kroger to save on bag usage. They drive less on the weekends to save gas to save the O-Zone. Guess what? None of this matter.

    The threat of global warming is over. It is here. It is proven it self time and time again and the fact it was 60 degrees yesterday and raining in February in Indiana is enough for me. The threat is here, it is too large for us to come back from.

    But, this font and design firm did do one thing right. They used a fad (similar to hand bags and babies) to generate a name for their firm. So I applaud that effort.

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  2. Now Ricky, like music, I'm going to have to disagree with you completely on this one.

    In fact, the font becomes more readable as it becomes smaller considering the holes get smaller and basically rids the fact that there are even holes in the font. The statistics comes from the company. I'm sure they did quite a bit of testing and research that proves what they say. I mean, I'm sure they didn't get the font on the first try.

    I will agree that it is not browser safe. But, why would you care about using it on the web? It's only meant for print because you can use an arial type font in web and it won't matter.

    This firm is very innovative and I completely respect them for their efforts. And yes, it may not save the planet, but it helps. Eventually, we will be limiting our resources and I'm sure ink will one day be included considering it is not a continuous resource.

    I'd say that any step forward deserves a pat on the back and recognition, so you come up with something better and more innovative and then I will pat you on the back. Haha!

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  3. I applaud your responses.

    I agree that this is a font that is designed for print purposes only. Moving on, call me in 5 years. I want you to call me and tell me the first piece of print media that you see and what it is because it will be an antique. Print media is on it's way out. Bill Gates has said it. Steve Jobs has been saying it for years. I am saying it. Print media is going to be compared to cassette tapes in the next five (I would give it ten to make myself safe) and this font will not matter.

    Go to the web. The future is web. Period. But I do agree that this firm has grabbed way to get your attention and fill that "green" void.

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