Reducing Printing Costs
Can font selection help you lower your printing costs?
A recent study by independent printer & toner review site printer.com
has concluded that you can, in fact, lower your printing costs, just by selecting a different font.
Which fonts lower costs?
The study looked at 10 fonts, using Arial as the benchmark. What they found was surprising, namely that because some
fonts are thinner and therefore use less toner, you could theoretically lower your print costs by up to $80 a year
per printer, just by switching your default font.
The clear winner was Century Gothic.
According to the study, Times New Roman provides a good balance between style and savings.
Of course, there's always that small matter of taste and your company's image to consider as well.
The fonts evaluated, in order starting from the most cost-efficient were these:
Most Cost-Effective Fonts (best to worst)
- Century Gothic
- Ecofont (a font designed specifically to use less toner)
- Times New Roman
- Calibri
- Verdana
- Arial
- Sans Serif
- Trebuchet
- Tahoma
- Franklin Gothic Medium
So, it seems you could actually reduce your printing costs, AND help the environment, AND have to change
cartridges less frequently, just by changing your font choice.
Another side benefit of choosing a different font, in our opinion, is that it seems that everybody
uses the same couple of fonts - usually Arial and Times (and more recently, Calibri, which is the default
font in Office 2007). That's a little dull, and it's hard to make your business communications stand out
when they look the same as 75% of the rest of the world. A little creativity is not a bad thing, is it?
Of course, the best way to reduce your printing costs is still to not print at all unless you need to...
Other ways to cut printing costs
You can also reduce the amount your business spends on printing by taking some or all of the following steps:
Ways To Reduce Printing Costs
- Send your BusinessVision forms (invoices, statements, etc.) electronically instead of on paper;
this also has the benefits of reducing mailing / stationery costs significantly. We have
several suggestions we can review with you on how to do this effectively
- If you're still printing dot-matrix invoices or other forms, give them up. After all is said
and done, laser-printed forms cost less to print (and in our opinion, look far better)
- In addition to considering a different font, consider the size of font you need to print; it needs
to be big enough to be comfortably readable, but it doesn't need to be huge
- Consider adjusting the darkness setting on your printer - setting it a little lighter or using
"economode" as HP calls it can make a subtle difference that could add up
- Buy the right printer for your needs; many of the small, inexpensive laser printers, for example,
have very high toner costs, since that's where the manufacturers make their money,
and each time you replace a toner cartridge, you also need to replace the drum, which can
get very expensive over time
A more economical choice is a larger, workgroup printer with suitable monthly duty cycles.
You might spend more up front, but the total cost of ownership will be much lower in the long run
- Invest in a duplexer if the documents you print would be well-suited to printing on both sides
- Recycle your scrap printed paper for printing on the backs for things you won't need to keep or
send out to customers
- Figure out how many copies of documents you actually need - many companies print too many
copies of their business forms
- Coach your employees about not printing things like personal e-mails, web pages with graphics,
or any other content that is not actually required for your business
Please give us a call if you want to explore some additional options for reducing your printing costs. It can actually make
a difference to your costs AND to the environment.