While skimming a National Geographic in the doctor’s office waiting room last week, I came across an article about a new font that promises to save the environment and save businesses money.

I couldn’t skip over the short article; I needed to find out how just poking holes in Arial could have such an effect on the bottom line.

The font looks like any other, with one exception — Ecofont, as it’s called, is pocked with little holes. The idea is that by poking holes in the characters, you save more than 25 percent of ink/toner over the regular Arial typeface. According to Ecofont’s creators, legibility is not at all affected. Read more…

Jenny Sweeney econolypse Ecofont, National Geographic, Norway, USA Today

A recent Ars Technica article profiled the Norwegian electricity company Lyse and its off-the-wall way of increasing sales and building brand loyalty – by giving a $400 discount to customers who dig their own fiber optic cable trench. It seems like a cockamamie marketing trick, one that was destined to fail. But the opposite happened. According to the article, Lyse increased its number of customers from 500 in 2002 to 130,000 today.

By having customers mine their own trenches, the article continues, Read more…

Jenny Sweeney Office 2007, Worker Productivity Lyse, Norway, tech support, Training