Just My Type: Could Using a Different Font Save You Money?

Especially in the current climate, all businesses are looking to save money. One area which you may not have realized could save you money is in your choice of type font when printing out documents.

Inkjet and toner cartridges have not traditionally been the cheapest items, but you could shave some pennies off your printing costs by choosing the right font.

One recent survey done by a company in Holland that compares printers and how much they cost, has found that different fonts take up different amounts of ink to be printed. In fact, your choice of typeface could save you up to nearly a third of your toner cartridge and ink toner outgoings.

The company carrying out the survey set up two printers – one ink jet and one a laser printer – to see whether different fonts made a difference to price, and, if so, how much.

Both machines were set to their standard settings of 600 X 600 dots per inch.

The baseline font was Ariel, and it was compared with various fonts as the machines were put to the test. The overall winner? Century Gothic, which provided savings of some 31% when compared with the price of printing out Ariel documents.

In fact, the company carrying out the survey has said that someone who printed out 25 pages a week would save around £12 each year if Century Gothic was the default typeface used on all documents. A heavier user of printing, such as a business, would save around £55 over 12 months.

For even bigger organisations using multiple printers, that figure could be potentially hundreds of pounds saved in ink toner costs annually.

Century Gothic is a particularly thin and light font, and it even beat the second place font Econ font  which was designed specifically to slash printing bills by using less ink.

However, it may be that Century Gothic doesn’t look quite right for your documents, or help portray quite the image you want for your brand. In which case, there’s another solution to ease the pressure on your printing budget. In third place, Times Roman emerged as a good, solid choice.

The firm conducting the survey switched between the 10 most commonly adopted typefaces, choosing a font size of 10 or 11 points. It carried out the research by printing documents which had been saved as PDF files and used a software program called Apfill to calculate the coverage.

Compatible cartridges: Common Myths Debunked

Many, understandably, blanch at the price of cartridges from the original manufacturer, which are high because that’s where the print companies make much of their money.

But many shy away from compatible cartridges because they fear that the quality will not be the same, the printer will make mistakes and so on.

But the reality is if you stick to a reliable retailer, where all cartridges are tested for quality and reliability before going on sale, your average cost  per page with compatible products will fall significantly. And the more you print, the more you save, though it’s still worth considering compatibles even if you only print small amounts.