You can probably guess that Times New Roman uses a lot less ink than Bazooka does, but did you know that there exists fonts designed specifically to use as little ink as possible?
Ryman Eco and Ecofont are the two currently available solutions et they both have different uses and advantage.
Ryman Eco
Ryman Eco is a font in which letters are composed of many thin lines instead of a larger one. The spaces between these lines reduce ink usage by about 33% when compared to a similarly sized font. On inkjet printers, thes spaces will be partially filled with ink splatter and ink diffusion through the paper fibers. This means that, at small point sizes, the letter look full.
This font has been designed to reduce ink consumption withous comprimising readability and looks. It can be downloaded here for free. Once you’ve downloaded it, open the ryman-eco.zip file, inside the folders, you will find a RymanEco-Regular.otf file which you can then open and install. This font should then be available in your programs. You might have to reboot your computer for it to show up.
Ecofont
Ecofont reduces ink usage by inserting small holes in the letter. Depending on the font used, you can save between 20 and 35% ink. These holes are almost invisibe at font sizes below 10 points due to ink spread and splatter on inkjet printers. Readability is unaffected by thes holes. Although, at larger font sizes, the holes are visible appearance suffers. This font is thus more adapted to personal or disposable than to professional documents.
You can download one of the Ecofonts for free here. Once you’ve downloaded it, open the .zip file. Inside, you will find a .ttf file which you need to open and install. This font should then be available in your programs. You might have to reboot your computer for it to show up.
An Ecofont app is also available. It allows you to work with your preferred font and inserts the holes when you print your document through the app. It work with Arial, Calibri, Times New Roman, Trebuchet MS and Verdana. It is available here for 30$.