From Holland comes a brilliant idea. The Ecofont maintains readability but uses less ink when printing.

Here’s the info from the folks who created it – a Dutch ad agency…

The prints we make for our ‘daily use’ not only use paper, but also ink. According to SPRANQ creative communications (Utrecht, The Netherlands) your ink cartridges could last longer. SPRANQ has therefore developed a new font: the Ecofont.

“After Dutch holey cheese, there now is a Dutch font with holes as well.”

Appealing ideas are often simple: how much of a letter can be removed while maintaining readability? After extensive testing with all kinds of shapes, the best results were achieved using small circles. After lots of late hours (and coffee) this resulted in a font that uses up to 20% less ink. Free to download, free to use.

One of my great frustrations is that I’m still printing loads of documents that end up going into recycling. So, I’m going to start using the Ecofont in my printed documents starting today.

Interestingly, on the screen at least, the cut-out dots don’t really show up until you get to a fairly big size – around 24 px and up.

I think, just to help spread the word, I’ll add a “made with the ecofont” in the footer.