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There's a hole in my typeface, dear Vera, dear Vera
Posted by Si_Daniels in
12 Dec 2008 — 5:39pm
12 Dec 2008 — 5:39pm
http://www.ecofont.eu/ecofont_en.html
"The inventive designing method of the Ecofont - ommitting spaces in each
letter to decrease the black surface of the letter and thus save ink by printing - is intellectual property of SPRANQ creative communications, Utecht, The Netherlands. Imitation of this technique is prohibited."
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12 Dec 2008 — 6:31pm
Huh. I never realized I was saving the planet too. Where do I get my retroactive government grant? Jimi should get one too.
12 Dec 2008 — 6:41pm
AppleWorks? What decade is this from? Or does it not work with iWork?
12 Dec 2008 — 6:59pm
And a medal for Michael Harvey... http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/adobe/studz/
13 Dec 2008 — 7:56am
http://counternotions.com/2008/12/12/ecofont/
13 Dec 2008 — 11:14am
How shortsighted he was. He should just print in Braille which uses no ink at all, that would save 100% of ink.
ChrisL
13 Dec 2008 — 11:28am
At least it was designed in the Netherlands so there won’t be an AIGA award to roll my eyes at.
16 Dec 2008 — 1:45pm
Si, Here is another option for you:
ChrisL
16 Dec 2008 — 6:00pm
Thanks, Chris:
That's one of my favorite lettrforms. I wonder if it is widely used outside of the USA, where it is very common.
powers
16 Dec 2008 — 6:12pm
Surely in Iraq and Afghanistan.
ChrisL
17 Dec 2008 — 5:21am
"Surely in Iraq and Afghanistan."
Not likely, the holes shown above were made from the front of the sign.
Cheers!
17 Dec 2008 — 6:09am
LOL!!!
ChrisL
17 Dec 2008 — 7:05am
And the top of the sign is bent from having a shoe thrown at it. (Size 10, I believe.)
17 Dec 2008 — 7:59am
So, Holy Fonts are the new hotness? Time to break out Fontlab and start adding holes to helvetica.
Isn't this kind of dumb anyways, since most ink is soy based now? Or so I thought....
17 Dec 2008 — 8:18am
>And the top of the sign is bent from having a shoe thrown at it.
Maybe they were aiming at the Bush behind the sign?
17 Dec 2008 — 8:40am
Ahhh, so they were Bush whackers!
ChrisL
17 Dec 2008 — 9:35am
they've been doing that for years in the sign biz
(I was looking for the tip off that that site is a joke, but there doesn't seem to be one. )
-=®=-
17 Dec 2008 — 12:34pm
>I was looking for the tip off that that site is a joke
It could be that we're missing it. Perhaps the humor is just too subtle or too Dutch for us to comprehend?
17 Dec 2008 — 1:03pm
Do the Dutch do something like April Fools in December?
17 Dec 2008 — 2:27pm
I think it's more of a year-round thing.
Si
17 Dec 2008 — 2:33pm
Or maybe just an occasional Dutch Treat :-)
ChrisL
18 Dec 2008 — 6:15am
I've heard a rumor that the Swiss are working on a new low fat cheese. It reduces fat by placing holes in the cheese.
18 Dec 2008 — 7:18am
Wouldn't setting with a thin type like helviteca light save more ink?
18 Dec 2008 — 7:59am
Probably. Wasn't there a recent thread from a sign-maker asking about ink-saving typefaces?
18 Dec 2008 — 8:29am
Don't most printers have an 'economy' mode which in effect, turns every printed piece into a low-ink solution?
As far as I understand, couldn't just using environmentally friendly inks be a better solution than trying to reduce them at severe cost to anything we actually bother to print?
I mean, it's one thing to be conscious about the ink you're using - I can't possibly forget and I can't allow myself to be wasteful of it, but to sacrifice everything in a vain attempt to minimize the ink used to me seems like tokenism
Is this the Yellow Ribbon on te back of my car, for eco-minded people who don't really want to make a difference, just look like they do?
Could these people be pushing for adoption of newspapers and Magazines in PDF and advocacting a trend away from print for people who don't need print instead and reduce the mount of ink that way?
18 Dec 2008 — 9:42am
Couldn't one simply reduce the point size? Say from 10 to 5, or even less. That reduces both paper and ink consumption by at least 75%.
It would be totally worth the inconvenience and eye strain.
(I'm patenting idea that by the way, so don't don't even think of trying it.) #<|:o)
-=®=-
18 Dec 2008 — 9:46am
Oh yea... And eleiminate spaces. That will save time as well.
-=®=-
18 Dec 2008 — 9:58am
There are plenty of better options than a holey font, but this is really just another lame greenwashing attempt by a firm trying to impress clients.
18 Dec 2008 — 10:05am
How about blind printing for ultimate ink savings?
18 Dec 2008 — 12:23pm
Just a publicity stunt indeed. But they pulled it off ;-)
Some "facts" --> http://farlukar.110mb.com/stuff.php#ecofont
18 Dec 2008 — 3:32pm
Wasnt Vera designed for screen?
21 Dec 2008 — 9:35pm
>Wasnt Vera designed for screen?
Yes Vera is a somewhat less hinted version of Prima Sans which was originally developed for Netscape as a Verdana challenger.
22 Dec 2008 — 6:45am
"There are [] better options than a holey font, [] this is [] another lame greenwashing attempt[]."
Why? It is automatic, and beside printing not being the greenest form of communication, this works. How many graphs are chewed up to make that graphite toner, not to mention the electricity saved not charging that portion of the page? It's bind moggling.
Cheers!
22 Dec 2008 — 10:37am
David, surprised you weren't interviewed for this AP piece...
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jtLQxmtanjrUBlpH2V0YBh...
22 Dec 2008 — 2:26pm
Let's not forget Herr Spiekermann once tried saving the planet with FF Mt, by just throwing away the vowels.
http://typographica.org/001087.php
22 Dec 2008 — 2:33pm
One of my favorites, Zara!
ChrisL
22 Dec 2008 — 6:52pm
@ Zara & Crhis... about Erik Spiekermann's FF Mt
When I first saw FF MT, I thought it was hilarious, so I downloaded and installed the font right away. (I actually had very sound proffesional humourous distraction required here reasons at the time)... Around the same time, I was uninstalling a bunch of fonts that I had no use for use.
Then... Time passed. My dentist asked me to re-design the sign I'd done for her before. It was basically an editing job, but changed fonts. I did the work in the same file the previous version was in so I could show her a quick "before and after"... Mean-time, unbeknownst to me, one of the fonts I'd deleted was the one I'd used in the old design. For some reason, the god's chose to make FF MT the default fall back-up font for that file... In the event that to one I'd originally specified should be unavailable. She looked at it for a few seconds ("Dr. Lbvk Dntst..." and said, "Um, Russ, I think there might be some spelling mistakes there"...
-=®=-
22 Dec 2008 — 10:15pm
No spelling mistakes there, Russ, just an effort at conservation :-)
ChrisL
23 Dec 2008 — 7:22am
Dr. Lbvk Dntst
That's exactly what it sounds like midway through getting a filling.
23 Dec 2008 — 7:59am
DARN!
I never thought of that... FF MT is the perfect typeface for dentists' signs.
(FF Mt, by the way, is FF Meta with no lowercase vowels, which Erik Spiekermann put out a couple of April fools ago.)
-=®=-
23 Dec 2008 — 2:53pm
Why not just use a light typeface?
Or make a website instead.... :)
28 Dec 2008 — 5:49am
sorry to bump this but couldn't resist after reading the FAQ:
Is there an Ecofont serif too?
The Ecofont is (also) intended for business purposes. In business environments the sans serif Verdana - on which the Ecofont is based - is often used.
The link Jos posted explains the lack of a serif holy.
Daniel
28 Dec 2008 — 3:03pm
When I started a green marketing company in the '80s, one of our precepts was smaller ads.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the experts in small space advertising didn't last long.
Large corporations and their agencies (and those that aspire to greatness) feel obliged to book large-space ads, with lots of creatively leveraged white space of one colour or another--anything else would be beneath the dignity of their market position.
30 Dec 2008 — 9:53pm
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