A new font has been developed by a Dutch company, which had been long looking for ways to reduce the environmental costs of printing.

According to the company, the new font cuts ink usage by about 15 percent. Basically the new font, dubbed as "Ecofont" has little holes in the letters.

The font was designed by Spranq, the Utrecht-based marketing and communication company, which struck on a Swiss-cheese design after failures with the earlier experiments using thin letters and partial letters - like the stripes of a zebra.

Company co-founder Gerjon Zomer said, "It turns out that it's necessary to preserve the size and outline of the letters to keep them readable."

He informs that though the font is not beautiful, it could be adequate for personal use or for internal use at a company.

The font is offered free by Spranq on its Web Site. The site experienced a rise in traffic last week as word of the Ecofont began to spread. Much of the traffic came from United States.

Zomer said, "That was kind of gratifying because when you put something online you never know what to expect."

Developers are being invited by the company to the Ecofont under a free, open-source model. As of now, Arabic and Hebrew versions are already under development.