New Free Eco-Friendly EcoFont Cuts Toner Use by 20%, Saves Money and the Earth!   - 1,981 Views, 2 Comments

If you managed to score a good deal on an otherwise expensive printer, chances are the manufacturer will make up for the “steal” by charging an arm and a leg for ink. Even worse is that your new printer might end up needing new ink cartridges more often than you anticipated. This means that in the long run, you may very well end up paying more for ink than you did for your printer - even the very first time that you need to replace your toner cartridge!

Over the past several years, hundreds of ink refill centers have sprouted up in an effort to cash in on the ink cartridge business. They claim to offer significant savings on ink over purchasing brand new cartridges. Consumers can refill empty cartridges at just about any Walgreen’s or at the now popular Cartridge World. Unfortunately, depending on how often you might require refills, at around $10 for black ink and $25 or so for color ink, even refilling used cartridges can add up fairly quickly. So what if you could visit your local refill center less often by making your ink cartridge last longer? According to Netherlands-based creative communications firm SPRANQ, you can.

Making your ink cartridges or toner last longer now can be as simple as selecting a particular font - the eco-friendly Eco-Font Developed by SPRANQ, to be specific. The new Ecofont is a version of the Vera sans typeface with one distinct difference - there are little tiny - barely visible - holes punched in the letters, in order to save ink. The end result is text that looks like it has tiny holes punched in it, but the outlines and shapes of the letters have been left intact. This may sound strange, but the font is every bit as readable as popular fonts such as Calibri or Courier.

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

Ecofont might not be in the same league as industry standards such as Times New Roman, Courier or Arial, but it’s an acceptable font for non-professional documents such as emails, first drafts, references, directions, labels, personal letters, and more. The makers of Ecofont suggest using 9 or 10 point for best results and the font works well with all laser printers as well as the vast majority of inkjet printers.

So what about savings? Using Ecofont results in up to a 20 percent savings in ink and toner and here’s where the “Eco” part comes in - using less ink and toner means less environmental impact from printing. In the near future, SPRANQ plans to introduce Arabic and Hebrew Ecofonts as well.

Ecofont is available for download for free by visiting the Ecofont website. Ecofont can be used on Windows Vista/XP systems, Mac OS X, and Linux.

Download the free EcoFont here.