Eco initiative

A new eco symbol

“Let’s save ink by altering a font,” the voice on the phone crackled with enthusiasm. Gerjon Zomer listened intently as his brother-in-law spoke. The idea coruscated with endless possibilities. “A eco-friendly typeface?” Zomer asked, acknowledging the value of conservation at any scale, especially in an era of heightened environmental concern. A year later, the idea is known as Ecofont, a typeface that uses up to 20 percent less ink and one that has been downloaded (free) more than 500,000 times worldwide since its launch three months ago.

Typefaces are those benign symbols that occasionally turn into rabble-rousers. First it was Helvetica. Two years ago it was made into a movie to mark its 50th birthday and The Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), New York, hosted an exhibition titled 50 Years of Helvetica that ran till March last year. Now Ecofont has roused our attention by hitching a ride on the go green bandwagon. Since its launch, it has enjoyed a groundswell of support from individuals and commercial companies. Its presence online and in print media including the Los Angeles Times, The Guardian and the Daily Telegraph highlights its significance. While Helvetica, the movie, explored the typeface’s interaction in urban spaces and flirted with its associations with bureaucracy and capitalism, Ecofont weighs the possibility of rearranging the totem pole hierarchy of capitalism and the gift economy.

Zomer remembers his conversation. “We were speaking about obsessive consumerism and its impact on the environment. We were addressing the usage of ink and its wastage through unnecessary printing. SPRANQ allocates a budget for personal projects.” The company is imbued with a spirit of conservation. It works with the education, culture and science sectors, government, NGO and non-profit organisations. Most of their projects involve education and agriculture where the environment plays a critical role. “Ecofont is an example of our personal projects. Though we endeavour to reduce pollution and the waste of recourses, we’re aware that much of what we do has only a symbolic impact. We call ourselves realistically green,” says Zomer. The project team at SPRANQ comprised Zomer, his partner, Alexander Kraaij, and Luuk van de Ven. Together they began to develop and reify the concept of an eco-friendly typeface over a 10-month period. “We had a lot of fun developing the typeface. It’s been worth the while,” says Zomer.

Experimentation with shapes
The first obstacle they encumbered was to find a copyright-free typeface that could be altered. “We selected Bitstream Vera, which is the open source alternative to Verdana,” says Zomer, who worked along with Kraaij on the concept while van de Ven worked on design testing. Together they developed different prototypes: thin lines, stripes, squares, circles and various shapes. “The first few results weren’t too promising in terms of readability,” says Zomer, explaining that the testing process was sedulous and attention to design minutiae was important. They tested each shape. The challenge was to reach a balance between readability – on print and screen – and the ink saving results. “We had to decide how much of a letter could be removed to maintain readability, and came closer and closer to a readable version,” says Zomer. The best result was when they created circular holes or tiny circles that were left blank inside on the original Bitstream Vera typeface. But they didn’t want to purport the result as an eco initiative without testing it first.

Testing for effectiveness
To estimate the Ecofont’s ink- saving ability, they tested it by comparing the Ecofont’s average black surface of the letters/signs to that of the source typeface (Bitstream Vera).
As the project was internally funded, the wherewithal wasn’t sufficient to conduct more than X (how many?) number of tests. They used Adobe PhotoShop to calculate the amount of added white space and tested it with prints that were scanned and analysed. They discovered that a smaller font size resulted in lower saving. The paper choice (substrate) and the type and age of the printer affected the final result. Their tests showed a saving of up to 20 per cent.
Zomer says, “In short, the smaller the letter or the font size, the more of the white holes in the Ecofont are filled with black ink. The tests were relatively easy because we measured digital results. It is far more difficult and time consuming to measure printing results because there are many variables like the kind and brand of printer, font size etc.” In the picture (main) you can see how Ecofont was created by omitting parts of the letter. At the shown size, this is not too pleasing, but at a regular font size, it is very usable. The use of circular holes is unwittingly associated with the popular Dutch holey cheese. Zomer simply calls it a “happy coincidence”.

Eco initiative
When we think “save paper” we tend to associate it with saving trees and forests, when you says “save ink” we don’t have many dominant associations. For Zomer, a paladin of environmentalism, saving ink is about preventing the useless consumption of oil and chemicals that end up suffocating the environment. “Progress is not always good for the environment. Printer cartridges use up to 3.5 litres of oil. Take offset techniques that use special lasers. The results are very nice on paper as the laser burns the ink [on the paper] and does it so well that it cannot be separated in the future. Sadly this paper cannot be recycled.” Zomer and his team, through Ecofont, hope to increase awareness among end-users and graphic designers; the font is also being promoted for commercial printing. Though the company doesn’t have sufficient statistics to publish the use of ink versus paper in an average size office of let’s say 50 employees, the increasing interest from investors may support the initiative further. “Hopefully with an increased budget we will be able to do all the tests we planned at the start. We are currently working on a better version of the Ecofont that will save even more ink and toner. We are also working on an Arabic version [of Ecofont],” says Zomer.

Ecofont has been widely used by commercial companies and governmental organisations. A few multinationals have considered using Ecofont, but SPRANQ has an agreement to keep their names confidential. Unsurprisingly employees at SPRANQ use Ecofont for internal and external prints like letters, offers and invoices. Zomer didn’t have a prescient view of how a simple idea like altering a font to decrease ink usage would turn out. The feedback has been mainly positive, he says. “People like the simplicity of the idea and the impact that it could have when many start using it. We’ve received several emails with even better ideas than ours. We also received a few negative responses about the Ecofont being a marketing stunt.” Still he feels the idea is a trend-setting one and is happy to see that international media has picked up the discussion about ink consumption. “One paper (The National Post) mentioned it as an icon of a new era of realistic, positive and creative environmental awareness. They termed the Ecofont as a symbol of a new generation that’s not capitalistic or green, but both.”
For more info visit www.ecofont.com

By Carolina D'Souza / Friday Magazine