The font you're seeing above is called Ecofont. I've seen this pop up on a few design and type blogs as a way to save ink by removing circles from letterforms while still mainting a recognizable character. As the ecofont site puts it:

Appealing ideas are often simple: how much of a letter can be removed while maintaining readability? After extensive testing with all kinds of shapes, the best results were achieved using small circles. After lots of late hours (and coffee) this resulted in a font that uses up to 20% less ink. Free to download, free to use.

Above I've set it in 90pt type so you can see it's makeup and at 10pt, as recommended for on screen purposes on the ecofont site (they don't however recomend a size for print). With all that said, I do have to wonder if ecofont is at all effective. Consider the following:

1. Generally when setting text type, one must set sans-serif text faces a bit larger and with a bit more leading than a tradional serif text face. Since ecofont is a sans-serif, larger letters require more ink and larger letters + more leading = more paper used.


2. Acording to the ecofont site, ecofont is based on Verdana. Verdana was originally designed specifically for the screen. If one were trying to design a font intended for saving ink and therefore to print, wouldn't one start with a basis intended for print?

It does seem like an interesting idea and according to ecofont's site, the font can save up to 20% of your ink, but wouldn't setting your type in a serif at a smaller point size with less leading end up saving more ink and paper?