If you’ve ever looked into how to save money on your printing costs you’ll no doubt have come across a whole host of different tricks that desperate home and office printer users will try in a bid to get the most out of their ink cartridges.
From the sensible to the impractical, the Internet is full of these tricks and tips. Anything from using compatible ink cartridges instead of the officially-branded cartridges to printing on duplex – and even, for those a little bit more ‘hands on’, taping over contacts on the ink cartridge itself in a bid to fool the printer.
But saving money and reducing your printer costs is actually a lot easier than you thought.
The answer? Simple. Change your font.
Wasteful fonts
It might seem pretty obvious when you think about it, but the type and size of font you print out can really rack up those printing costs over time.
Each font uses a certain amount of ink to print. The difference is fractional when you compare two different fonts, but if you’re a business or you print regularly at home these difference will start to add up.
Not only will you save on the amount of ink used when you print, but if the text is made smaller you’ll also cut down on the amount of paper you use.
Reports, email correspondence – the next time you’re printing lots of text, pay a thought to the font you’re using; is the font needlessly bulky, is it large?
The ‘standard’ fonts you’re likely to encounter in Word aren’t actually so wasteful. Times New Roman or Calibri, for example, aren’t the big culprits for business or home printing over-spending – but they’re still not the best.
The best money-saving font
Reducing ink use by roughly 30%, Century Gothic is perhaps one of the best fonts to print in. With its slender lettering, not only does it cut down on ink, but it’s also easy to read. (After all, it’s no use using a font that uses less ink but isn’t readable. Budget measures can only go so far!)
Over a year, large businesses could save hundreds of pounds on their print outs by switching fonts. In fact, many businesses are now adopting what we like to call the ‘Century Gothic Approach’, where all staff are now asked to kindly print all documents in Century Gothic.
So why not make the switch yourself?
Rob Henry is one of the directors at Ink Worldwide. One of the biggest suppliers of Ink and Toner in the UK.
5 Comments
Leave a Reply
Cancel reply
Leave a Reply
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
Sudipto
April 18, 2013 at 1:28 pm
Hey Rob,
Nice post and Thanks for sharing this information of saving money on printing cost as saving money is always a big concern. Till now I have no idea about how to save money on printing but now Thanks to you.
Rohit Kabdwal
April 18, 2013 at 1:46 pm
A nice article to save the cartridges as well as the printing cost.., i had never thought of the fact that font also constitute in the printing budget..,
nice research.. 🙂
Rob Henry
April 18, 2013 at 2:08 pm
Thanks for the great feedback guys. Make sure you look out for my next post.
Tom
April 19, 2013 at 9:51 pm
Recently, I found myself without a printer and I had to crate pdf’s of everything I wanted to print. At first I hated it, but no I like it. No more piles of paper, and everything can be zipped up on a disk.
Rob Henry
April 22, 2013 at 11:23 am
Plus, it helps the environment 🙂