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Urban Harvest

Confronting climate change and poverty, a new crop of city farmers comes of age in Africa. Table of Contents | Digital Edition
Guardian Environmental Network

Reading the Hot Type

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Believe it or not, some people still like to read books and newspapers, which means we still need ink. But perhaps we should use less of it. That's the idea behind Ecofont, an ingenious new typeface from the Netherlands, in which each printed letter contains dozens of tiny, ink-free circular holes.That raises an obvious question: Is it legible? Well, it all depends on the size of the letters. This page, for example, is printed in 12-point type. Any larger, and Ecofont's dots become more noticeable. Which might be a problem, because as we know, print media loyalists tend to be, well, on the older side. So keep the bifocals handy.

Related Tags: media newspapers printing