Crafting a Green Font: A Review of Ecofont

ecofontMy Papa, bless his heart, cannot STAND to see someone hemming and hawing in front of an open refrigerator door trying to decide what they want. It makes him sweat, like he can literally feel the pennies draining out of his pocket along with all that cold air.

I feel the same way about my printer ink. Seriously, I will do anything to avoid printing. And when my girls print stuff, and what they print is usually completely ridiculous and non-essential, I cannot STAND it. I can literally feel the pennies draining out of my pocket as all that pricey ink is frittered away.

Therefore, I heart Ecofont.

Ecofont markets itself as an eco-friendly typeface. It does this by being a holey font. When you print a document written in Ecofont, you’ll notice that the outline of each letter is present, but that the majority of the interior space is taken up with little blank spots. In a 10 or 12 point type, this isn’t noticeable. When the font is printed much larger, it becomes an interesting design element.

By putting holes in its type, Ecofont claims that it uses less ink; up to 25% less ink or toner. Mind you, I have no way to verify that data, and I don’t keep careful track of my own ink usage (those little girls and their ridiculous print jobs, remember?) to tell the story from my own perspective, but it does seem to make common sense, you know?

The Ecofont Vera Sans is a free font, and it’s the one that I use. Ecofont also offers a software package, for a fee, that says that it will turn any of YOUR fonts into an Ecofont. My graphic designer husband is tempted by this one, but so far we’ve confined ourselves to frequent home use of the free one.

An eco-friendly font is obviously of the greatest use to those who write a lot, like me. However, I also use Ecofont in craftier aspects. It’s interesting to use in scrapbooking, for instance. I’ve used it in a few layouts, and I occasionally use it in signage and banners and other situations in which the font is large enough that the holes have real impact.

What do you use cool fonts for? DIY business cards? Craft fair signs? What else?

3 thoughts on “Crafting a Green Font: A Review of Ecofont”

  1. Eco font is great! I’ve been using it over a year as the headline font on the green news page in First News, the children’s newspaper in the UK. Just make sure you always use it on a white background because if it’s on a coloured background you end up using more ink than you would with a standard font.

  2. Those are both AWESOME fonts! My husband is a graphic designer, so I’ve picked up a bit of pickiness about fonts from him, so that I won’t actually use a font unless I personally really like it. My guy, however, is such a font geek that he can recognize pretty much every font, and it really annoys him when fonts get overused–don’t even get him started on Comic Sans.

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