In the news over the last few days, reports about a kid whose science fair project was to compute how much the government could save by changing fonts. Long story short: some type faces require considerably less ink than others; the federal government prints lots and lots of documents; it buys a lot of ink and toner for its printers; it could buy less if it changed fonts.
Garamond, a typeface that requires about 25% less than other common fonts (such as Times New Roman), was created by Claude Garamont in the early 16th century. How much could a school like our save? Not millions, a fair guess might be 10-20% of toner/ink costs.
See Also
- Flowing Data. Save pens. Use Garamond font.” January 29, 2010
- Danielle Wiener-Bronner. “14-Year-Old Figures Out That Bad Fonts Cost the Government Hundreds of Millions.”
- Angela Neal. “Fonts That Use Less Ink.”
- Digital Inspiration. “Best Ways to Reduce Printing Cost of Documents, Photos, Webpages.” 8 June 2006
- Paul Rodgers. “Sixth-Grader Tells Government How To Save $400m On Ink.” Forbes 3/28/2014
