There are several ways you can save money on pricey printer consumables. For example, you can configure your printer driver to print two pages on one piece of paper. You can turn on “draft” mode for lighter output and less ink consumpton. And, my favorite: bypass printing altogether and generate PDFs.
Now there’s another option, one that combats excessive ink consumption at the font level: Ecofont, a free typeface that promises to reduce ink use by up to 20 percent.
Available for Windows, Mac, and Linux systems, Ecofont looks a lot like regular old Arial, but with one key difference: holes. Each letter has lots of little holes punched out of it, meaning it requires less ink to print.
Thankfully, as you can see in the example, Ecofont is still very readable. So you can use it for your everyday print jobs, switching to a regular font only when absolutely necessary.
Obviously there are lots of outline-style fonts that would accomplish more or less the same thing. But most of them are fancy, showy typefaces—not many look like everyday Arial.
One thing I discovered upon installing Ecofont is that it’s been ages since I installed a new font, and I’d pretty much forgotten how. If you need a refresher course like I did, you can find help on the Ecofont download page.
Do you have any other strategies for saving ink and other printer consumables? Share them in the comments below.