Comments on: A Simple, Smart, Free Way to Green Your Office

By: Eric

Eric — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 09:49:43 +0000

I think we can use both the economical printing and eco font to save more indeed. Readbility is still very good with both for draft/internal documents.
All this seems nice but what is really the impact of the measure?
Did anybody see a study?
On the other hand, I had a bad surprise as the ecofont (on a Mac, under open office or MS) is larger than the same size arial font… Consequence, we cover 10% more space on the paper and letters are larger… Is it really a good measure?

By: Eric

Eric — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 09:49:37 +0000

By: Sally

Sally — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 15:37:55 +0000

Thanks– I already downloaded Ecofont and am looking forward to trying it out. But I also use FastDraft or QuickPrint or whatever the ink-saver setting is ALL THE TIME unless I’m printing something for final/publication use. It’s not that hard to make a habit of it.

By: Paul Smith

Paul Smith — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 15:55:30 +0000

@bandolier Agreed. And I think for some it would be a visible indicator/reminder, internally and externally to the company, of their greening efforts.
But in general, it’s about going with what works, and what will best mesh with a company’s existing work culture, or where it’s headed.

By: bandolier

bandolier — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 11:54:48 +0000

Yeah, but asking people to use “economode” is a lot easier than getting them to change the font no? I mean, the IT guys could just set that up in an office and the whole place would be good to go. A lot easier that installing a new font on everyone’s machine AND convincing them to use it. I definitely love the idea, but I see software/hardware changes on the printers as much better – IF you could get the printer companies to cooperate.

By: Paul Smith

Paul Smith — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 04:14:28 +0000

@Anonymous: Exactly. But do people do it? It’s like having a programmable thermostat. Yes, it can make a lot of difference, but does everybody do it. Not likely. But imagine if you did both, the cumulative possibilities!

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 22:10:55 +0000

Don’t most laser printers have an “economode” which accomplishes exactly this? (smaller/less frequent dots = less ink = lighter letters = holes in letters)

By: Paul Smith

Paul Smith — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 22:04:57 +0000

@daveconrey, I’ll drop a line to the designers to let them know about that. Though it seems they were aiming for more everyday, functional rather then design oriented applications. But I’m with you, I’d like to see it used in a broad range of applications.
@bandolier They tested out fonts specifically for readability. Actually, when I was reducing the image size for this article, when I got close to the standard, 12pt or so range, you couldn’t really see of notice the holes.
Great idea re ink volume. That is addressable to an extent, by shifting your printer’s image quality. But not something many would think to do or see as something making much impact. But I’m sure it would.

By: bandolier

bandolier — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 18:51:40 +0000

Seems like a gimmick, but asuming it’s as readable as, say, arial, then it’s actually a brilliant idea. I would imagine that as much depends on your printer’s ability to be accurate as anything else. Plus, couldn’t you just take ANY font and use the printer software to inject similar holes? Or, idea of the century, just reduce the ink volume? Of course, that’s how printer companies make their money, the ink costs more than the printer!

By: daveconrey

daveconrey — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 17:22:16 +0000

Great idea. The only problem for me, as a designer, is the format of the Ecofont. It’s only offered in TrueType, but we use OpenType exclusively. If they come out with that version, I’d be “open” to it.