Are "eco-fonts" real? Does it make a difference to choose an eco-friendly font?
Or is it subtle misinformation unknowingly shared by well-meaning designers?
Are eco-friendly fonts really eco-friendly? Is it worth your time trying to focus on or even convince clients of them? Today’s Substack is written with the intent of busting a few myths and misconceptions.
First, we have to start by understand ink composition in print design.
Ink use is an important thing to consider in green graphic design. Traditional inks are composed of petroleum-based formulations, meaning that they contribute to a reliance on fossil fuel extraction in order to create them. Plant- and vegetable-based inks and soy-based inks are growing in popularity, and offer a more sustainable alternative that is better for the environment. Plant-based inks both reduce the reliance on unsustainable extraction of nonrenewable resources and emit less air pollution (or VOCs/Volatile Organic Compounds) into the air when they dry. Vegetable derived inks naturally have less VOCs, as less petroleum is used in the formulation.
Unfortunately, not all plant-based inks are made alike. There is no regulation on their concentration, so make sure to ask what percentage of the formula is vegetable based and what is petroleum-based. Plant-based inks are usually more vibrant than traditional inks which is honestly a win for us sustainable designers. When considering inks though, if possible, specc-ing for plant-based inks or algae ink is more sustainable than traditional petroleum-based inks.
Curious about algae ink? Check out this past issue!
Algae Ink: The best plant-based ink around?
Algae Ink promises high-contrast blacks, carbon sequestration, and light-fastness, but is it too good to be true? There’s been a lot of talk in the design community over the last few years over algae ink–if you haven’t heard of it, you should have have, and if you aren’t using it, well why the f*ck not?
So how much does ink matter? How does it compare to the impact of material choice that the ink is printed on?
Inks make up 1% or less of the material used in a project. So by percentage, they're the least important element of sustainability. This is a hard and fast rule for packaging and print design. The material cost and carbon emissions associated with the material make up the vast majority of the impact of any print project. The environmental savings you can achieve by switching from a virgin stock to a recycled stock are significant and meaningful. The larger the scale of the project you’re printing the more meaningful those carbon footprint savings are.
Then what about eco-friendly font choices?!
If all ink coverage on any print piece is less than 1%, the amount of ink use in your font choice is even less. This is why I don't think it's particularly useful to stress over what font you use, and whether or not it's eco friendly, and how much space is taking up. When choosing fonts we need to consider more than just ink use. We need to think about legibility, accessibility, and also the branding for the client.
So why is everyone talking about eco-friendly fonts?
It all started in 2014, when a sixth grader proposed he could save the government over $400 million by switching to a different font that used less ink toner and thereby saved ink and money.
Unfortunately, it's not so easy. His recommendation was to switch the government font to Garamond from Times New Roman because there would be a 30% savings of ink and money. But there is one fundamental problem: Garamond is a thinner font.
According to John Brownlee, a designer and writer for Fast Company, to have the same legibility and accessibility as something like Times New Roman, you need to increase the font size. When the font size is increased the ink savings vanish. This is mostly partly due to the font’s x-height of Garamond being much lower than Times New Roman. To create the same legibility as Times New Roman, and to ensure the government documents would be accessible to all, the font size of Garamond would have to increase, effectively eliminating all ink savings.
We cannot abandon accessibility of information and design in our work simply to save a minuscule amount of ink. We must ensure our messaging and design doesn’t exclude others.
Unfortunately, this debunk is often not discussed when blogs talk about this Garamond vs Times New Roman “discovery”.
In fact, reducing the font size is sometimes recommended as a possible option, even with a caveat that it reduces legibility. This isn’t the solution it appears to be, even when ignoring that fonts make up a minuscule impact of your design project. Your energy is much better put towards picking a more sustainable paper to print on!
What about all those “Ecofont” fonts with the holes in them?
These fonts are designed to be “eco-friendly” through the use of gaps/holes inside the font. Neither of these fonts are very good for legibility at small size, and honestly, a bit ugly at large size. It’ll be a hard sell trying to convince your client these look actually cool enough to use for their brand font, haha!
But most importantly, they’re still operating at pretty minuscule savings themselves: Eco-font claims 15% less savings than the Vera Sans family specifically, as it’s the base for the “eco-friendly font”. This savings doesn’t translate into equal savings for other fonts.
Also realistically, even if you use these fonts for headlines to save ink while making them more legible, it’s just, you’re looking at fractions of a percentage of savings. It’s really okay. Trust me. You can relax on this one and just use whatever font spark joy :)
Let’s talk about the Ryman Font. I watched their promotional video, and needless to say it was interesting.
First off, it’s functional spreading misinformation because we already know that ink use is not as important as the material you print on. It’s putting out a lot of fear-mongering ideas in the form of like “SEE HOW MANY THINGS YOU PRINT EVERY YEAR? YIKES. MAYBE YOU’RE CAUSING CLIMATE CHANGE”. Yeah, don’t really think so. Anything that redirects climate crisis onto the individual consumer and their actions is spreading misinformation as it is fossil fuel companies and richest people on Earth who cause the most emissions. I also want to know how the f*ck they got the data for the 6.5 million tonnes of CO2 emissions somehow reduced by using this eco-font? Always check sources folks, and if the source is missing, be skeptical of the claim…
“Polluting our climate with every click” is also complete misinformation; Amy with her green web design information can give you some more debunk information on that!
So yeah, don’t be scared by weird promotions like this making you feel guilty about your font usage. Fonts make up maybe 0.5% of the material cost of your project… at most :) We can actually talk about sustainable choices without using overdramatized fear-mongering scare tactics for solutions that don’t even matter much! It’s actually easy to make more significant changes!
But what if you’re printing a lot of documents and want to save ink?
It’s true that if you’re printing a lot of plain text documents you might want to save some ink. That’s valid. Ink is expensive and ink cartridges suck; not only are they more expensive than Chanel perfume, they’re just disposable single-use plastic and aren’t recycled regularly. Also 70% of the “ink” in the cartridges is actually water.
(The answer to the poll above might surprise you, BTW!) It’s Serifs. Which is likely part of the reason the US Government uses Times New Roman for printing everything.
Turns out, you don’t need some kind of odd looking font with lines through it to do the same thing on, well, any font. Enter EcoFont.
If you really want to save ink, just just Ecofont; a subscription based (it’s $7/year) program that will punch minuscule holes in all your documents before you print. It works on any font and apparently isn’t noticeable by the human eye when printed. Way better than the other options! It does cost money though, so that kinda sucks.
So, what’s the ultimate takeaway?
I encourage you not to worry too much about your fonts, have fun, and honestly, it is one of the least important choices that you can make in terms of green graphic design. It's much more valuable to be considering your paper stock options, printing method and also the type of ink being used. We can fall into decision fatigue as green graphic designers and it’s important to put your energy into the areas where you can have the most meaningful impact.
Also, always see if you can track a claim down to a direct source, not just a random claim. There’s so much random misinformation especially about greenwashed stuff these days on Google, even the first page of the results. Definitely just don’t trust everything that comes up right away. It’s a rough world out there. Side note: Anyone else’s Google searches been invaded by clearly AI results? Totally whacky unrelated things to your search unless you think about what a stupid bot would try and connect two and two together to give that result? Yuck.
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Reading: The Seed Keeper by Diane Wilson (Indigenous Fiction)
“The Seed Keeper follows a Dakota family’s struggle to preserve their way of life, and their sacrifices to protect what matters most. Weaving together the voices of four indelible women, The Seed Keeper is a beautifully told story of reawakening, of remembering our original relationship to the seeds and, through them, to our ancestors.”
Watching: Nothing really right now.
Listening: New Order T-Shirt by The National
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Sources:
Brownlee, John, and John Brownlee. “Why Garamond Won’t Save The Government $467 Million A Year.” Fast Company, March 31, 2014. https://www.fastcompany.com/3028436/why-garamond-wont-save-the-government-467-million-a-year.
CNN, Madeleine Stix. “Teen to Government: Change Your Typeface, Save Millions.” CNN, March 28, 2014. https://www.cnn.com/2014/03/27/living/student-money-saving-typeface-garamond-schools/index.html.
So happy you brought up that Garamond government 'case study'. I'm always screaming about how it was debunked haha
Fascinating post!