[LINK] Green ICT ideas

[Ivan Trundle]

On 27/03/2010, at 9:57 PM, stephen at melbpc.org.au wrote:

> The University of Wisconsin - Green Bay .. says that printing out 
> documents in Century Gothic, rather than its old font, Arial, uses 30% 
> less ink.


Linotype produced Agilita (sans serif font) back in 2007 as an attempt to use less ink (and InkSaver was invented in 2008 doing much the same) - but it's Ecofont which is the real champ, in that it affects ALL fonts: it makes each font used use 20% less ink (so you're not stuck to using Century Gothic or InkSaver).

Century Gothic (CG) is a spectacularly muddied font overall, with too much similarity with ITC's Avant Garde, with very rounded geometry). It's not the easiest on the eye.

CG is fine if you're a Star Trek fan (they use Century Gothic in the Star Trek series).

There's another significant issue in using fonts like CG: to make it visually readable, the leading needs to be increased over other fonts, so with greater line spacing, more paper is used (okay, so we are saving ink, but using more paper). 

The content of a document will often dictate a choice of font: CG and Avant Garde etc are considered very 'arty', and not as content-neutral as Helvetica, Stone Sans or Myriad. Look for a copy of Grafik Magazine (from the UK) if you want to see how this style of font can look on a page: it is a hard read.

Because of their geometry, fonts like Century Gothic are too extreme (read: arty and values-laden) to be taken seriously in the printing world. 

Writers who print their own material for distribution should take note, and if they really want to save ink, invest in Ecofont instead (and be prepared for moire effects and other. Better still, investigate buying paper with tighter weaves (less ink spread in inkjet printing), or align the printhead properly. There's also software such as PretonSaver (from halftheink.com), but I've not tried it yet.

iT