Ecofont
ecofont close up
A new eco-friendly font is claimed to lower ink usage by 20%. The font uses small white circles inside the letters to reduce the amount of color used while maintaining readability.
Sounds pretty good, but the 20% figure apparently comes from comparing the area of the “holey” font to the original, not from actual comparisons of ink usage. It seems like the type of printer would have a fairly large impact on the actual savings. Also, it isn’t clear that this is any better than using a printer’s draft mode (although I guess you could use the two concurrently for maximum eco-friendliness). Another issue is that the font makes on screen text look fuzzy - sort of like the ink is running out on your monitor. That’s not a problem with draft mode.
However, ecofont does raise some interesting questions about how UI design can help the environment. Perhaps generating such a discussion is the bigger goal here.