Save Money: Use A Different Font

It was last year when Spranq, a Dutch marketing company, unveiled Ecofont, a free typeface designed to use less ink or toner when printed. This is accomplished with many small holes in the letters, which reduces the printable area on each letter. Spranq estimates that you can save up to 25% of ink and toner costs. In addition to saving money, it’s also more friendly for the environment, since it results in fewer ink and toner cartridges and printers being discarded and produced.

Spranq is also developing software that will take any typeface you have and create a perforated version for you.

Although the font is still very readable, some people may balk at using a typeface filled with holes for their marketing materials or other public documents (even though it’s barely noticeable at normal text sizes). Of course, it’s perfectly fine for personal use and intra-office memos.

Another option has been revealed by an experiment made by printer.com. They ran printing tests with several fonts that come with Microsoft Office. They found that the Century Gothic typeface used the least ink and toner, and saved a significant amount of money even in small print jobs.

The IT department at University of Wisconsin-Green Bay took this information and recommended the use of Century Gothic to its staff and faculty, and made Century Gothic the default typeface for its computer labs. They estimate a savings of $5,000 to $10,000 each year — 5-10% of their total ink costs.

For those of us that haven’t achieved the “paperless office” quite yet, a similar company-wide initiative could be an easy way to bring down IT costs.