| Title | RYMANSECO |
| Brand | RYMANS |
| Product/Service | TYPEFACE |
| Category |
G01. WELL-BEING AND ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT PRODUCTS |
|
Entrant Company
|
GREY LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM
|
|
Advertising Agency
|
GREY LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM
|
|
Production Company
|
MONOTYPE London, UNITED KINGDOM
|
Credits
| Nils Leonard |
Grey London |
Chief Creative Officer |
| Dan Rhatigan |
Monotype |
Type Director |
| Nick Rowland |
Grey London |
Creative Director |
| Andy Lockley |
Grey London |
Creative Director |
| Henrik Ridderheim |
Grey London |
Creative |
| Debbie Vayanos |
Hogarth Worldwide |
Font Designer |
| Gunnar Vilhjalmsson |
Monotype |
Senior Type Designer |
| Bal Pawar |
Hogarth Worldwide |
Studio Manager |
| Felipe Montt |
Grey London |
Creative |
| Henrik Dufke |
Grey London |
Creative |
| Nicky Russell |
Grey London |
Creative Producer |
| Alix Toothman |
Grey London |
Planner |
| James Sutton |
Grey London |
Business Director |
| Sophie Fredheim |
Grey London |
Account Director |
| Lucy Dunn |
Grey London |
Creative Producer |
| Grant Paterson |
Grey London |
Account Manager |
| James Cleary |
Grey London |
Designer |
| Dee Butler |
Greyworks |
Head Of Broadcast |
| Cat Hurst |
Greypossible |
Senior Digital Project Manager |
| Ted Howe |
Greypossible |
Head Of User Interface Development |
Brief Explanation
The entire concept for the Ryman Eco typeface is about the final print experience and finding the perfect balance between saving ink, legibility and aesthetics. Legibility is an important part of the design; options to remove parts of letters (e.g. punching holes in to them) may have used less ink but they are often hard to read.
To encourage enough interest so that people would want to use the font, we needed to make something that would be visually interesting at a close look or a large size, but useful and effective for everyday printed text.
The Brief
Ryman Stationery is the UK’s leading specialist stationery and office supplies retailer, serving the business, home office and consumer markets. Ryman is fully committed to reducing carbon emissions wherever possible and realises this commitment is important to its customers.
So, the brief was to develop an initiative that gives some added value to their customer base, whilst delivering on their CSR promise – by creating the world’s most beautiful sustainable font.
How the final design was conceived
During the evolution of the Ryman Eco design we observed that using parallel strokes to make up each letter appeared darker as stray toner and excess ink filled in the gaps between the thin lines, something we refer to as ‘ink spread’.
We looked at how our eyes and brains compensate by filling in ‘missing’ areas and how much of a character we can remove before we lose the sense of its form. Then we pushed the character forms to make them even more interesting and distinctly Ryman without using more ink: efficiency combined with elegancy.
Indication of how successful the outcome was in the market
At time of writing:
• The video was viewed 83,027 times, in 138 of the world’s 196 countries (70.4%).
• Of the 83,027 people who watched the video, 53,108 have downloaded it (63.96%).
The font attracted lots of attention on Twitter, including re-Tweets by WWF UK during Earth Hour, and has had coverage from the BBC, Creative Review, Evening Standard, and Fast Company – even making national front page news in Argentina’s ‘El Nacional’ newspaper.
As people start to use Ryman Eco, the font launch has helped Ryman succeed in its CSR mission to get the world to print more sustainably.