Save 4. 00. M printing cost from font change Not so fastI am really bummed that the idea trending hot online now, popularly represented as the US government could save 4. It is not the change of design that saves toner it is that their chosen font is smaller at the same nominal point size than the comparison fonts. Not to mention that the 4. That said, it is great that middle school kids the study has two authors, although one has gotten the media attention are doing creative problem solving and applying scientific thinking No sarcasm intended. It is not their fault that non obvious aspects of the problem mess up the idea. Readers of my blog may remember that point size and font size have a rather nominal relationship. Garamond lowercase is about 1. So it is no surprise that it uses less ink at the same point size. This is why most scientific studies comparing typefaces first compensate by resizing the fonts to eliminate differences in the lowercase height called x height by us font geeks. This study failed to do that. As a result, they actually get results that are the exact opposite of other studies. Century Gothic has a very large x height, so printed at the same nominal point size uses more ink than Times. Link Station Hd H250 Lan. Printed at the same x height as in other studies, it would use less. Fonts/CharacterMap/happydots.png' alt='Cool Dots Font' title='Cool Dots Font' />Setting any font 1. Of course, there are some caps in the texts as well, which would make the savings a bit less. Interestingly, this is pretty exactly much what the study found. So, you could just as easily save ink by setting the same font at a smaller point size. For a moment though, let us pretend that the study did in fact equalize the x height, and found that a typeface change saved noticeable amounts ink. With a normal typeface such as Garamond, this would mean that the strokes making up the font were just thinner at the same size stroke is a virtual thing here modern digital fonts essentially trace the outlines of the letter. If that were good and useful, why not go further Why not make the strokes even thinner Maybe there is no font bundled with common operating systems and software that would meet these needs, but one could just commission one. Even a master type designer could do a basic four member family for 1. K or so, which is a lot less than the hundreds of millions at stake. Make it razor thin and save even more But any of those changes, swapping to a font that sets smaller at the same nominal point size, or actually reducing the point size, or picking a thinner typeface, will reduce the legibility of the text. That seems like a bad idea, as the of Americans with poor eyesight is skyrocketing as our baby boomers and even their children, like me age. Aside from that, the reduction in tonerink usage probably would save less money than claimed in the study. The claim is based on the proportion of total cost of ownership of a laser printer that goes to toner. There are sadly two big problems with the idea that using less ink or toner will save that amount of cash, based on that proportion. First, large offices that use printers and copiers do so under a maintenance agreement that includes the cost of toner. They pay per page printed, and actual toner consumption is generally ignored. What are all the symbols people use on myspace Where do I get them How do people make their display name have cool looking letters I am quite a fan of the Arduino as there is so much software already available on the internet, this makes completing new projects easier Recently I bought a few. Save 400M printing cost from font change Not so fast. Find a set set of numbers you want on your home. This could be a font you like in a word processor or a fancy set of numbers you found using a google image search. In such cases, a font change will only save based on the page count, not the toner. Second, the study makes the interesting claim in a footnote Ink and toner are used synonymously in this study. Even though traditional ink is more expensive than toner, a focus on determining the percent savings in cost rather than the magnitude of the cost obviates this difference. Urm how They are assuming that the percentage of printing cost ink or toner accounts for is the same for all classes of output. Cool Dots Font' title='Cool Dots Font' />Download the free KG Primary Dots font by Kimberly Geswein. It is a handwriting font created in 2013 and has been downloaded 250,971 times. This is untrue.  Many of the documents that account for a substantial percentage of the governments overall printing costs are printed on a printing press, using offset lithography. For offset printing, the percentage of the cost of  that is associated with ink is in fact much smaller than for laser or inkjet printing. But it isnt a fixed percentage, either, due to the large proportion of the cost that is associated with setup. It will be a higher percentage for short runs, and lower for long runs. Additionally, because of the huge cost of owning printing presses, many or most offset litho jobs will be printed out of house, using third party printers. So, for in house printing press printing, the savings will be a much smaller proportion than the quoted 2. For outside printers, they will not charge based on minor variations in ink usage they just check things like whether its a page of text vs graphics. Either way the savings will be less. There is a different way an effectively smaller font will definitely save money by allowing multi page documents, especially long ones, to take fewer pages So maybe it all works outif you dont worry about legibility. There is another practical issue with Garamond in particular. The version bundled by Microsoft from Monotype Imaging does not have a bold italic, which is an unfortunate lack if one wants to promote its use for all government documents. Yes, you can turn on bold and italic in your word processor anyway. You will just get a faked font instead of the actual one, which is ugly and less legible. The question that should be asked is what font and size combination could be used to maintain or increase legibility while saving money on printing, by reducing page count andor inktoner usage, with a font that is bundled with common apps or free, and has all the required font styles But that is a far more complex question, and most folks covering the issue much prefer simple and appealing messages like high school kids tell govt how to save 4. I like innovative ideas to save money. Really, I do. But I wish the media and public had consulted some experts on this area before going nuts promoting this idea, because it just doesnt hold wateror save moneywithout losing legibility. Thomas is currently senior technical product manager for fonts and typography at Extensis, in Portland, Oregon. He has been on the board of ATyp. I, the international typography society, since 2. In other relevant background, he was a teaching assistant for a senior level stats course in his second and third years of undergrad, has an MBA from UC Berkeley, and an MS in printing, specializing in typography, from the Rochester NY Institute of Technology. Updates notes. This post has seen some editing for grammar, clarity, adding a few more details, and to be less of a jerk. Again, I am impressed as heck that a high middle school student is attempting serious research. I would not be analyzing it critically ,like a serious adult study ,if not for the fact that the media initially largely embraced it uncritically as if it were. The student study does not specify which Garamond they used, but it was obvious to me in the samples that they were using the Monotype version that is bundled with Microsoft Windows. Because Garamond goes back to the 1. Since I wrote this, there has been some interesting coverage. The Guardian UKwas in with the initial pack, with some caveats, but then their Nadja Popovitch wrote about this blog post and interviewed Jackson Cavanaugh of Okay Type for his reaction and analysis. Meanwhile, John Brownlee did a nice job of explaining the point size part of my analysis in laymans terms, for Fast Co Design.