‘Low carbon’ font spells futility
January 15th, 2009
Once upon a time, there was a wonderful magazine delivered free to homes in the UK. It was called Innovations, a catalogue of wonderful things from people who didn’t let pragmatism or common sense stand in the way of their ingenuity. Why turn on your bedside lamp when you could have tiny headlights in the front of your slippers? (If you could find you slippers in the dark, that is.) In the unlikely event of 16 hours of unbroken British sunshine, you could take advantage with a sun lounger that swivels a full 180 degrees!
The spirit of Innovations lives on in cyberspace, as evidenced by Ecofont. Creators SPRANQ say:
The prints we make for our ‘daily use’ not only use paper, but also ink… your ink cartridges (or ink toner) could last longer. SPRANQ has therefore developed a new font: the Ecofont.
Their moment of genius arrived when they realised they could remove tiny spots from the inside of each letter, whilst maintaining legibility of the text, creating an ugly font that was difficult to render. Actually, I’d like to think the moment of genius was ignoring the fact that users could simply print less, print smaller, print lighter, or use the in-built ‘economy’ mode that most printers come with as standard. Truly, genius is 1% inspiration and 99% oblivion.
Entry Filed under: General
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9 Comments
1. manigen | January 15th, 2009 at 1:18 pm
That\\\’s… so… rubbish…
Apart from anything else, increasing the amount of white on an LCD screen increases the power usage, so I\\\’m not convinced that this font would save much carbon over all.
2. flaxdoctor | January 15th, 2009 at 2:03 pm
manigen, sorry to split hairs, but I think you’re wrong. The natural state of your lcd is clear, thus transmitting the light from your backlight. If you apply power to a pixel, it’ll black out (or display a colour/whatever). So having more clear pixels on your screen mean there might be less power use.
Utter trivia anyway, quite like the story about this miserably useless font…
3. Tom | January 15th, 2009 at 2:52 pm
Actually, it was 1% inspiration and 99% marketing. The font was produced by a marketing company, who managed to get most major news outlets to pick it up, and drive traffic to their website and get their brand better-known.
The actual font is utterly pointless.
4. manigen | January 15th, 2009 at 3:03 pm
Flaxdoctor: Ah, I was under the impression that it was the other way round. Of course, if you’re right, then the folks at http://www.blackle.com/ have been lying to us.
5. reef | January 15th, 2009 at 5:08 pm
Either way if it is more difficult to render/read on screen (LCD or otherwise), it will spend more time on your screen, potentially using more energy than the predicted savings.
And that’s even before you get headaches from squinting at your eco-media…
6. Jobe | January 15th, 2009 at 5:10 pm
Hi all!… first time commenting here, so..uhm…hello!
To manigen and flexdr!
I think i can help on the monitor thingy… prolly cos what you two said got me curious, but mainly cos i cant sleep and had just changed the battery for my clamp meter :P
I figured that it was as what flexdr said, with LCDs always having their backlights on would have barely a diff on white n black pixels…and blackle seemed a bit of a marketing gig at first glance…
I also didn’t think blackle should have had to quote a whole darn Robertson et. al. paper on their “about” page for just 1 sentence on “displayed images” from 1 paragraph that wasn’t tested much further in the paper. It seemed just so much of a hype attempt.
Anyways, long story short:
Here is my tribute to the anally trivial :)
LCD Monitor = Dell 3007WFP (30″ LCD Monitor)
CRT Monitor = Dell P1130 (21″ CRT Monitor)
Black page = http://www.blackle.com on Chrome app window on fullscreen
White page = http://www.google.com.my on Chrome app window on fullscreen
Only power source for the monitors was clamped and tested.
LCD with Black page: 0.46 A
LCD with White page: 0.51 A
Just under 10% difference
CRT with Black page: 0.42 A
CRT with White page: 0.52 A
More than 20% difference
Does it take more to display a white pixel than a black on pretty standard CRT or LCD type monitor?
“Aye!”
heh :P
Cheers all!
-e-
7. manigen | January 15th, 2009 at 8:31 pm
Thanks Jobe! That was definitely above and beyond the call of duty.
8. flaxdoctor | January 19th, 2009 at 10:38 pm
Doh! Foiled again. Guess I’m confused with the off state on watches and calculators being clear and LCD screens being black.
9. David Bradley | January 20th, 2009 at 4:17 pm
This is hilarious and certainly goes well my clockwork slipper headlights and combined tidal-powered sunlounger and cheese grater
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