A Simple Font Change Can Save You a Lot of Money

The secret to saving money on printer's ink (which, by the way, is more expensive than human blood per volume) turns out to be quite simple: change the font in the documents you print.

Because different fonts require different amounts of ink to print, you could be buying new printer cartridges less often if you wrote in, say, Century Gothic rather than Arial. Schools and businesses could save thousands of dollars with font changes. [...]

When Printer.com tested popular fonts for their ink-friendly ways, Century Gothic and Times New Roman topped the list. Calibri, Verdana, Arial and Sans Serif were next, followed by Trebuchet, Tahoma and Franklin Gothic Medium. Century Gothic uses about 30 percent less ink than Arial.

The amount of ink a font drains is mainly driven by the thickness of its lines. A font with "narrow" or "light" in its name is usually better than its "bold" or "black" counterpart, said Thom Brown, an ink researcher at Hewlett-Packard Co., the world's top maker of printers.

Link

I, for one, am sticking to Comic Sans regardless of the cost!


I work in the Admin office of a small school district. We are always looking for ways to save money. I've forwarded this article to our IT department head.

Thanks for a great article!
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There is actually a font designed to do just this. Recently they developed software to make any font an eco-font but the original is available for free and doesn't look half bad :)

http://www.ecofont.com/en/products/green/font/download-the-ink-saving-font.html
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Comic sans? I'm surprised there's people who still use it. There basically are entire factions devoted to exterminating people who use that font.

http://bancomicsans.com/main/

Personally, I have to go with Paul Renner's ever timeless Futura.
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In the "more expensive than human blood" link it looks like there has been no effort to distinguish between the cost of the ink and the cost of the print head and other high tech included in the ink cartridge. These are indeed wearing parts.
It just strikes me as akin to saying "I paid $200/quart for my last oil change, and oh by the way they changed the timing belt and water pump for free"
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Times New Roman is the default font in MS Word. So unless you play with fonts every document most people are already using the most ink-efficent font.
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