The font Century Gothic could become your business’ new best friend, as recent research reveals how different fonts can have a drastic effect on the amount of ink your printer uses.
Global stationery retailer Staples has measured the output of ten common fonts used by companies around the world to see whether simply altering a font can have an effect on the bottom line. They discovered that simply changing a font could save a typical business as much as £163.51 ($210.68) per year.
It all comes down to the font’s coverage yield. This is the standard amount of space a font takes up on a page. Typically, ink and toner manufacturers set a 5% coverage as standard per page – so if an ink cartridge says it produces 500 pages, that’s 500 pages at 5% coverage.
With that in mind, Staples researched fonts including Century Gothic, Calibri, Verdana, Arial, and Tahoma, to see how much printing a page would cost. They based it on a business printing 250 A4 pages per week, using an HP 124A Toner with a page yield of 2,500.
From this, they were able to calculate the total cost of printing each font over the space of a year. The research showed that Franklin Gothic Medium was by far the most expensive font, costing £518.78 ($668.77) per year, while Century Gothic turned out to be the cheapest at £355.27 ($457.99) per year.
Arial, one of the most popular fonts used in business, came out at £468 ($603.31), which means that by swapping to Century Gothic, you’re saving around £112.73 ($145.32).
While these are estimates based on one specific toner product, these calculations give you an idea of just how printer-friendly certain fonts are. You’re going to get through more ink printing Franklin Gothic Medium than you are printing Ecofont, so it stands to reason that switching is quite a sensible idea.
The retailer offered a few other ideas as to how businesses can slice away needless costs when it comes to printing.
- Turn off your printer when it’s not in use. Many larger businesses will have multiple duplex printers, so switching off can save on electricity bills.
- Print double-sided to reduce paper costs and reduce wastage.
- Encourage a ‘don’t print unless you have to’ rule, bringing screens to meetings where possible rather than printing documents that will only be used for an hour.
