Wednesday, July 22, 2009

An Ink Saving Font

My favorite tech blogger on Yahoo is Christopher Null. Yesterday he wrote a post about saving ink with the font you use. You can read it here. The font suggested is Century Gothic. I changed my text message font to check it out. Usually I use Arial if I don’t want formal print but this one looks nice if a bit taller and lighter. Now I’m going to change the default font on my printer and screen to match. I’m also wondering if a font that uses less ink also uses fewer bites in the text file size? If it does wouldn’t that mean that it takes less time to transmit? Saving bandwidth and speedier transmissions of documents might be a nice extra. What font do you use?

7 comments:

murat11 said...

This was a fun topic, Lee. I am a font freak, as is one of my middle (now upper) school students. My favorite fonts have been Myriad Web Pro Condensed, Baker Signet, High Tower Text, Centaur, Georgia, and Garamond, Calibri, and Cambria. I got really hot for Calibri (the new default with Windows 2007) for a while. I encourage all my students to explore beyond Times New Roman, as long as their choices remain "conservative" in look (only for their fonts: left of center politics are welcomed!). The only font I forbid is Comic Sans; my middle school fontabulist sez I have post-traumatic Comic Sans syndrome. Given its blocky crayola "aesthetic," I'd say its banning is good from the ink-saving perspective, too.

I took a look at Century Gothic; not sure it satisfies me eye. Looks like my carbon footprint will not shrink due to font politics.

Lee said...

Glad you liked it, Paschal! I'm a bit of a font freak too, moreso in earlier days than now. My favorites used to be the Lucidas and Verdana. Now I prefer fonts that look like hand written block. Not too many good ones out there for that. The elaborate scripts are gorgeous but hard to read. Do you have any favorite font sites you can share? I used to have one but have long since lost it.

Cheers!

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Lee said...

Thank you Philly. I'm honored. I'll have the award posted by the end of the week.

Blessings!

San said...

I'm an old fogey. I like Times New Roman for printed text. Also Palatino. I used to be into Hoefler Text, but now it looks a little big. My short fling with Papyrus is over too.

On our site we use Verdana. I like that on a website where the text is minimal.

Century Gothic is very similar to Avant Garde, which is the font of the lettering of our gallery sign. It's one of the few fonts which has the old-fashioned grade-school-style-printed lowercase a's, isn't it?

Lee said...

I've gone through a Verdana stage recently myself, San. Plus various others. I used to collect fonts. No longer but I still admire many of them. I just don't find them all useful.

Cheers!

Ink Optimizer said...

EcoFont is a step in the right direction. Not only ink is expensive, the printers do a great job spending it!

I recently found a software utility, PretonSaver Home, that "turns" every font to eco-font. It reduces ink consumption by up to 70% and provides excellent print quality.

I did not have to change the fonts I use or change the way I print. PretonSaver works in the background and very smartly optimizes the ink/toner used by my printers.

Try it for free. Download PretonSaver from halftheink.com (http://www.halftheink.com)