26 ms·
Teen to government: Change your typeface, save millions
- gesman 13y agoWhen he'll be 18, he'll start seeing that it's easier to change the government than convincing government to change anything.
- ozh 13y agoOr use http://www.ecofont.com/ http://www.ecofont.com/
- colechristensen 13y agoThis feels very much like greenwashing, selling you a product that makes you feel like you're doing something positive for the environment which actually has extraordinarily minimal impact. I'm sure there are a thousand things a person could do to lessen their impact before toner usage becomes a priority. I would be very irritated if anybody handed me something with compromised readability (letters filled with holes) to save a fraction of a penny in toner.
- collyw 13y agoThere is a word for it, "greenwashing". I have noticed this numerous times, where something is sold as green, but at the end of the day, it produces more consumption, not less. Biofuels are a perfect example in my opinion, as they are just burning more crap and polluting the air. Only if the fuels are grown on what was previously concrete does the whole green argument about biofuels make any sense.
- vacri 13y agoEh? Your criticism makes no sense. Burning a fossil fuel means taking an existing source of captured carbon and releasing it into the air. Using biofuels means burning the fuel, releasing carbon into the air... then recapturing the carbon in the next batch of fuel to be grown. Plants don't just spring out of the ether - they're made of carbon, taken from the air. It's a zero sum game, unlike fossil fuels. No concrete required.
- collyw 13y agoSo a tree is growing before biofuels were developed. Say biofuels did not get developed, the tree is still there converting carbon dioxide to oxygen and hydrogen. (Generally a positive thing for the environment). Now someone develops biofuels. Convert the tree to biofuels, and burns them. One less tree, more CO2 (generally a bad thing for the environment). Whats difficult to understand about that? Now if you plant another tree on what was a piece of concrete, and burn that, THEN you have a zero sum game. I imagine most of the biofuels are being grown on lands which previously had (non-biofuel) plants growing rather than on concrete.
- maxerickson 13y agoTrees and plants are a short term carbon sink, rotting releases most of the carbon back into the air. (So a tree does store carbon as it grows, but there is probably a sensible separation between a few hundred years in a tree and geologic carbon. "Biochar" is one idea towards sinking carbon, the charred material doesn't rot as quickly.)
- vacri 13y agoStop being fixated on reclaiming concrete. If you clear a section of forest for crops and burn the harvested wood, you have one carbon release. Now you grow crops for biofuels, you capture some carbon back. Convert to fuel and burn it, another carbon release. Grow crops again and you have sequestered the carbon again. Overall, you get the net effect of one large carbon release. But you can't do the same with fossil fuels - all fossil fuels are carbon releases, and that carbon is never recaptured by the process. The 'green argument' is that after setup, there is little in the way of new carbon being introduced, which is very much not the case with fossil fuels. Separating your recyclable garbage doesn't mean you don't still generate non-recyclable garbage and throw that out, yet doing this has helped reduce strain on landfills and has had a host of other benefits. From your argument here, because we don't turn recyclables back into the original oil or wood they came from, it's not worth doing.
- collyw 13y agoWell fossil fuels were plants a while back. I guess it is a balance between having the carbon in / on the ground, or in the air in CO2 form. Encouraging people to burn biofuels will only put more of it in the air, or is there some evidence of less fossil fuels being burnt since biofuels were developed?
- colechristensen 13y ago>There is a word for it, "greenwashing". Yes, that would be the 6th word I wrote. >Biofuels are a perfect example in my opinion Biofuels are an awful example because biofuels are complicated. The carbon accounting for growing bio-fuel crops vs. food crops vs. not farming, vs. managing the land for environmental purposes.... the pollution accounting by replacing petroleum with bio-fuels... the complex production costs and effects. Some biofuels are certainly better than others, but I don't think anybody with domain knowledge would propose none of them have positive impact. Reducing fuel consumption is a separate issue from choosing the best fuel source, conflating the two isn't productive.
- dghf 13y agoOr just print everything in 75% grey?
- sweedy 13y agofunny enough, they have not even written their own FAQ or manuals with this font
- amykhar 13y agoOf course, the ink-sellers would just promptly raise their prices. But, it's still a very creative way to approach the budget issue.
- crusso 13y agoIs there a reason why you think that a typical price-demand curve wouldn't apply to printer ink? http://www.bized.co.uk/learn/economics/markets/mechanism/interactive/part1.htm http://www.bized.co.uk/learn/economics/markets/mechanism/int...
- jlarocco 13y agoYes. Ink and printers are complementary goods. A person can't buy whatever ink they want, they need the ink that goes with their printer. At the same time, if ink prices go up $5 per cartridge, few people will go out and buy an entirely new printer.
- crusso 13y agoInelasticity of demand from complementary goods comes into play when the complementary good is relatively very expensive or difficult to replace. Consumer printers cost about the same as an ink cartridge or two. Consumers aren't "stuck" paying for more expensive ink if manufacturers decide to start screwing them on the price. [edit: wanted to add this] Even with the ridiculously complementary goods of automobiles and gasoline, more expensive gas shifts consumer demand away from gas guzzlers.
- scrabble 13y agoIs the school using ink, or toner? Toner is significantly cheaper, and there are still savings by switching fonts.
- ams6110 13y agoMy kids school sends home a ridiculous amount of paper. Here's a way to save a ton more money: stop. It's 2014, we don't need paper to send information home in most cases. Email or put it on a website.
- k-mcgrady 13y agoUnfortunately there are still people with children of schooling age that can't use computers that well or don't have email. I know several. I also know some people without internet access at home. I don't think we're too far off being able to replace paper with email in this case though (5-10 years max).
- icebraining 13y agoWhy not just provide both options, and letting people choose? It's not a terrible administrative effort to just send some via email and print out others.
- adestefan 13y agoBecause it's simpler to do it one way and the lowest common denominator wins in this case. Honestly, I prefer the paper version since it's less likely I'll ignore it.
- diminoten 13y agoThe argument here is that while it may be simpler to do it one way or the other, there might actually be savings to be had if enough people opt for the digital method. It's not like these documents don't already exist in a digital format. The "challenge" would be maintaining the mailing list.
- 300bps 13y agoHe's right: Chanel No. 5 perfume costs $38 per ounce, while the equivalent amount of Hewlett-Packard printer ink can cost up to $75. Most offices that I've seen use laser printers. Toner isn't cheap but it's cheaper by several orders of magnitude over the ink in an inkjet printer they're using for the comparison here. the GPO's efforts to become more environmentally sustainable were focused on shifting content to the Web. This is the right answer. It's a permanent solution to a long-term problem. Teen to government: Change your typeface, save millions What he's really saying is: "Spend millions changing your typeface, maybe save millions." There are laws that dictate how forms and paper must appear. Changing the font could have many unintended consequences that will need to be studied and tested for, probably by high-priced consultants. And of course you'll have to test if the new forms are as readable by low-vision citizens and people with other disabilities. But have to hand it to a 14 year old at least thinking about this stuff.
- icantthinkofone 13y agoIt's a silly comparison anyway. If that's what it costs to produce ink then that's what it costs. However, I'm sure there's a premium price put on ink no matter what it cost.
- Herald_MJ 13y ago> Toner isn't cheap but it's cheaper by several orders of magnitude over the ink in an inkjet printer True, but this doesn't actually matter. A lot of toner will still be being bought by schools & governments, and that toner could be used more efficiently by the font switch this student describes. Additionally, if you take the annual budget a school spends on toner, and take the % less ink used by Garamond than Times New Roman (which could have been calculated using inkjets), you'll end up with the real saving figure, which we can safely assume will be non-trivial.
- evanb 13y agoAlso, 38*2 = 76 > 75. So... he's wrong, as far as this particular comparison goes. I know that's not the point---that the point is the order-of-magnitude comparison. But _someone_ at CNN needs to be checking this kind of thing, right?
- colechristensen 13y agoClever kid, but not a real solution to a real problem. Printers using ink cost orders of magnitude more per page than printers using toner. Reworking all the governments forms would cost billions.
- aestra 13y agoI don't think we need to rework government forms. It could be used for new forms, or when the form gets a revision.
- collyw 13y agoActually I think a better cancel options built into printers / printer drivers would save far more. Loads of times that I have wanted to print one page, and ended up with a whole multi-page document. And is it really necessary these days that Acrobat comes up with a different print dialog from Firefox, which is different from another one?
- chrismcb 13y agoWhile it may look better on paper, in the sample in article I'd much rather be reading a form printed with Times New Roman than Garamond. Seems a bit easier to read
- hajile 13y agoMoving to a sans-serif font that's a little thicker could probably solve both problems at the same time.
- JensRantil 13y agoWhy not just switch to this? http://pro.sony.com/bbsc/ssr/show-digitalpaper/resource.solutions.bbsccms-assets-show-digitalpaper-digitalpaper.shtml http://pro.sony.com/bbsc/ssr/show-digitalpaper/resource.solu...
- antidaily 13y agoLet's build a smarter planet.
- huhtenberg 13y agoSame idea, widely ridiculed - http://www.ecofont.com http://www.ecofont.com
- solox3 13y agoI've tried it long ago. Back when consumers could only afford poor-quality inkjets, the hopeless ink smearing actually worked to this font's advantage.
- 72deluxe 13y agoI visited the site and still have absolutely no clue what it does or what they offer. I know I can buy a Home Pack but I don't actually know what it does. Apparently, it can save me money somehow but I am still none the wiser. It does show plants growing from piles of coins. Is it a fertiliser?
- jccalhoun 13y agofrom the product info l ink at the top of the page: "Ecofont software saves ink and toner by leaving small holes in the letters." http://www.ecofont.com/en/products/green/printing/packages.html http://www.ecofont.com/en/products/green/printing/packages.h...
- xbryanx 13y agoPreviously considered by the University of Wisconsin Green Bay: http://nowiknow.com/an-inkling-for-ink/ http://nowiknow.com/an-inkling-for-ink/
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- 3rd3 13y agoSounds like a good idea! While we're on it we could also focus on modernizing the overall bureaucracy by moving most services online. Edit: Removed "Instead of", clarity
- hrjet 13y agoI accidentally upvoted you. I agree with the overall sentiment except s/Instead of/As well as/
- 3rd3 13y agoInstead of paying people for typesetting new forms and letters you could instead pay people to typeset these in a digital format. Of course it would be smart to use less ink in case someone wants to print these. That's what I meant.
- floatboth 13y agoGaramond also looks good. I hate Times New Roman.
- ZeroGravitas 13y agoHow about: "Prevent predatory and abusive pricing shenanigans by large corporations and instead create some workable semblance of a free market, save millions for yourself, save many further millions for your employers/voters, and have the warm glow of doing your alloted job to some minimum standard".
- ElDiablo666 13y agoCorporate pricing shenanigans and barriers to market performance are some of the least important factors in what costs money and ails society. How much freer of a market do you want? Anyone who claims that barriers to market freedom are important are either confused or dangerously deluded. Real liberty is abolishing corporations altogether because trying to fight corruption within capitalism is pointless. It's time to end problems at their source, not exacerbate them.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- 6cxs2hd6 13y agoAs I type this comment, most other comments are pointing out how a 6th grader got this wrong, by failing to suggest the "correct" solution of abandoning printing. I don't... how do I put this nicely. This is a kid. He is smart. He looked at the problem from a new angle. He came up with a nice hack. Presumably we want more kids with more of a hacking spirit. I hope he doesn't read Hacker News.
- mjolk 13y agoExactly. It's easier to get someone to modify his/her existing behavior than it is to get someone to stop a habit altogether. Additionally, do you know what doesn't require electricity to display text? Print on paper.
- imikushin 13y agoe-ink?
- mjolk 13y agoThat's enables long battery life, but it still requires electricity. Computers are great, but doesn't mean that they are the solution to every problem.
- zanny 13y agoAnd you need electricity for every page printed. Considering the rotors of a printing press, it is likely more than it takes to broadcast the page over the net to a device, and then view it for a few minutes.
- smsm42 13y agoThe problem is not volume, the problem is delivery. It is easy to deliver a lot of electricity to specific point (printing press) at specific time (when document is printed). It is much harder to ensure electricity will always be there and available when you need to consume that information. Also, given how fast the printing press prints and how many times a printed document can be read and for how long it can be stored, I'm not sure it actually is more electricity to print. Then there's another problem. Try fetching electronic document from 50 years ago. What? You don't have tape reading machine? You are not even sure which format it is in? Oops. Now try looking at a printed document from 500 years ago. Provided it does not physically degrade, can be read pretty easily. You can see Gutenberg's bible in the Library of Congress and you don't need anything to perceive information there. How much of today's electronic info would it be possible to read in 550 years?
- yitchelle 13y agoThis reminds of the dot matrix printer days, remember those? My 24 pin dot matrix printer had several print modes and one of them uses a 7x4 matrix to form a letter and less force for pushing the pins onto the ribbon. I never really made any measurements, but I remember its documentation mentioned a savings of up to 40% of ink. The normal mode of the printer is NLQ [1], so it would be quite big when compare to NLQ. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot_matrix_printing#NLQ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot_matrix_printing#NLQ
- Theodores 13y agoI was there, then. I remember the eco modes, however I think there was a speed benefit too so 'NLQ' really was just for posh letters to people, code printouts were in eco mode just because of the time required to print at NLQ. I also remember the paper with tractor wheels and the possibilities for wasting paper. To print one page tended to need three sheets as the print head was some inches below the tractor wheels. To print that one page would require a form feed to get to the start of a page, another to get to the end of the printed page and a third form feed to make sure some paper was in the rollers. Brilliant printers though, I would prefer one for occasional printing rather than a dried out inkjet.
- yitchelle 13y agoI also remember a hack to spray WD40 into the ribbon to stretch the ink a little further.
- billynomates1 13y agoI thought this was going to be about font licensing. Would the government save any money by using open fonts?
- bluedino 13y agoThink of all the time that would be spent in meetings, all the time it would take to re-configure documents and processes to use the new fonts, then all the little stuff down the road like some OCR system doesn't pick the new font up, handling complaints from people that the new font is too hard to see... Not to say it's not a good idea, there's just potentially a lot of side effects.
- TophWells 13y agoI think $100M per year makes up for those side effects. There will always be people whose workflows are interrupted by a new change, and legacy systems that don't like it for their own reasons. There are already systems in place to handle their complaints, because this is an expected part of any change in a large organisation, and is barely worth mentioning.
- johnward 13y ago"I think $100M per year makes up for those side effects." You underestimate how much money governments can spend on meetings :)
- happywolf 13y agoI would say a 14-year-old could achieve this is pretty impressive. While we give credit to his creativity and relative scientific investigation of this matter, things shouldn't be stretched too far as to recommend everybody to adopt this font everywhere. In this case, this seems the case. A printed document is meant to be read, and it is unclear if using the said font will have any impact on readability, and other usability issues. Think about it: for the sake of optimizing ink use, the trivial solution is 1) Use the smallest font sizes possible 2) Use the 'thinnest' font that arguably uses the least ink. However optimizing a single varible in this way is clearly not desirable, because it defeats the goal of printing documents. A document is meant for someone to read, no? :)
- macco 13y agoLook at relative numbers, not absolute. This saves next to nothing. Sorry.
- semi_colon 13y agoHis best bet for making wide scale change is to have Microsoft change the default font on Microsoft Word. Probably the most cost-efficient change.
- yincrash 13y agotwo things: 1. is garamond less legible after photocopying than tnr? 2. why not choose a sans serif font. serifs are wasting ink.
- hocuspocus 13y agoThe body of most printed stuff is typeset in serif fonts because it improves legibility. Even on my fairly low definition e-reader, reading a book in a sans serif font feels weird. Moreover, the stroke width of sans serif fonts is usually fairly unvarying, which seems to offset what you gain by ditching the serifs: http://www.matthewrobinson.co.uk/Measuring-Type http://www.matthewrobinson.co.uk/Measuring-Type
- al2o3cr 13y agoI don't wanna be the asshole here, but something tells me the GPO is not paying HP prices for "ink" - they're almost certainly using toner-based systems that vastly reduce the incremental cost per page. According to the LoC, a single day's Congressional Record averages 272 pages, so printing 2500 of them A DAY is 500,000 pages. At that point, you'd be worrying about how many inkjet printers you were throwing away every day...
- nardi 13y agoAccording to the article, they spend over $400 million a year on ink. It doesn't matter whether that's inkjet, or laser, or what. If they use 25% less of it, they'll save 25%.
- badman_ting 13y ago5-Year-Old to government: Your employees would be happier if you gave them cookies
- zacinbusiness 13y agoThe government isn't going to abandon printing entirely, ever. There are too many people who need access to documents who don't have printers, too much information that is too sensitive to email back and forth, and too many government offices with small one-off forms that visitors need right away. Besides, let's look at the cost of electricity, maintenance, insurance for broken and stolen devices, upgrade costs, and how pissed people will be when X system gets hacked and their info is stollen. I'm sorry, but paper is here to stay for a very long time.
- walshemj 13y agoand for some tasks having it printed works better
- seventytwo 13y agoMan, I wish I would have had that kind of support and encouragement by my school when I was 14. They were far more concerned with streamlining for the state standardized testing. I maxed out their math assessment test and all I got was a pat on the back... "Meh, fuck it", I learned...
- pkill17 13y agoIf only more of us thought in the same "minimal change, maximal effect" paradigm as this teen. Good work! Keep hacking!
- R_Edward 13y agoFirst, I like the kid's methodology. You can eyeball the various differences between font X and font Y, and see that the same passage printed in one is going to take more ink than the other, but how do you quantify the difference? He came up with a clever hack to relate an easily measurable attribute to a not-so-easily measured one. Second, intentionally or otherwise, he managed to divorce the savings ratio from the type of ink being used--whether you laser-print, inkjet-print, or press-print your text on paper, you're going to use x% less ink or toner with one font versus another. However, the selection of a font should take things into consideration besides the relative amount of ink needed to produce a body of text. Human and machine readability should also be significant concerns. And I would like to point out that a cost savings of $136 million represents less than two seconds worth of spending at the US governments current spend rate of $3.5 trillion per year. I don't know about anyone else, but I can't even imagine that level of spending!
- magoghm 13y agoIsn't $3.5 trillion per year slightly less than $111K per second?
- level 13y agoOh, that makes it much easier to imagine.
- R_Edward 13y agoAw, dangit! That right there is why I should always double-check my mental math with a calculator. I should have said 20.45 minutes, not 1.## seconds. Mea culpa. It's still not a huge savings, comparatively.
- tonyhb 13y agoComparatively, bringing fiber to NYC won't be so expensive (considering the results). At this point, it's not about comparatively. Optimising $240m a year is so fucking good when it's a short switch. Low hanging fruit. How do you optimise your apps? "Oh, this 100ms optimisation that is a one-pointer is comparatively not worth it, let's not do it"?
- neil1 13y agoThat is the highest price for ink and not the price that government's or companies who buy in bulk pay.
- Ellipsis753 13y agoPersonally I prefer the original font. The thicker letters would likely photocopy better too. I use a Brother printer that cost me £40 2-4 years ago. I can buy 20 cartridges from Amazon that work perfectly for just £12.90 with shipping on Amazon Prime. That's 65p each. A single original Brother cartridge can easily cost £16.44 from Amazon or £7.62 each when bought in a pack of 4 (I think the largest quantity they sell together). So these copy cartridges are over 10x cheaper. I've used them ever since I got this printer with no ill effects. The printer still makes create printouts and prints photos great too. I've heard that perhaps they break your printer faster than original cartridges but if this is true when I'm happy to just spend the extra £40 ever few years to just buy a new printer. I'll still have saved far more than that on ink alone (I print quite a lot). If anything perhaps this is the solution to cheaper printing instead? Also, random note. Once I went a Korean friends house and they had a normal inkjet printer with 4 gallons of ink in large pots of top of it. These had small tubes feeding down into the cartridges. They never had to replace the cartridges and they would never run out of ink. Apparently this is quite common in Korea although I've never seen it before or since myself in the UK. From googling it was something like this: http://www.amazon.co.uk/PrinterKnow%C2%AE-Compatible-Continuous-Expression-18/dp/B00E20X2M2/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1396019217&sr=8-6&keywords=Continuous+ink+system http://www.amazon.co.uk/PrinterKnow%C2%AE-Compatible-Continu... Although they had much larger ink containers. It seems it's called a "continuous ink system". It's pretty cool to look into anyway, even if you don't do a huge amount of printing.
- userbinator 13y agoYes, CIS is quite popular in Asia where inkjets aren't as prone to nozzle clogging but toner-based printers suffer from the more humid climate. Buying generic ink in bulk quantities is also much cheaper than individual cartridges (you can buy a whole LITRE of ink for the price of an original cartridge for some printers), and you can even dilute it a significant amount if you don't mind slightly reduced saturation - I've run 10:1 black dilution in my CIS and the output looks only very slightly greyish. Some printers have EEPROMs on the cartridges to deter refilling/CIS systems but the Chinese have produced "modchips", self-resetting cartridges, etc. to get around this; some can even reflash the firmware, presumably with one that has all the checks patched out.
- lnanek2 13y agoYeah, but Garamond is tougher to read, and ink prices are artificial anyway. If less money is made on ink then printers will become more expensive again - or more likely the price will just be raised more since it doesn't have much relation to the cost anyway. Printer makers actually put chips in their ink cartridges to prevent refills and cost effective generics after all. It is more of a DRM thing.
- Noxchi 13y agoWhy doesn't someone make an open source printer?
- admstockdale 13y agoI shared this with my students. We're learning about typefaces and graphic design right now. Some of these comments picking about a 6th grader are pitiful. We want to encourage these ways of thinking -- not nitpick
- illuminate 13y agoI do not want to encourage shallow, not-thought-through ideas so we can fluff the ego of children. The problem is not that we're encouraging kids, the problem is that duller adults prefer simple ideas to working ones.
- admstockdale 13y agoThis was actually a well thought out idea. He took the time and tried to do some research and analysis. While some of his conclusions were off, this is a great way to learn and think. But publicly humiliating him (which I think is the result of the media response), we're telling kids that if you make an attempt, you're going to be ridiculed. I don't know if you've ever been in a classroom, but one of the biggest problems is that kids feel like they can't fail because they'll be labeled as an idiot. Calling the ideas of a 14 year old trying to solve a problem "shallow" is pretty sad. I understand why kids don't want to tackle topics in mathematics and computer science with attitudes like this.
- yannk 13y agoCan we redo this study with Comic Sans MS?
- peter303 13y agoSimilar hack in Craigslist and Google: changing to a black ground saves a few watts per user per year. But this adds up to tons of C02 over all users.
- atonse 13y agoThat ended up being sort-of debunked. LCDs use about the same amount of energy to display blacks as they do whites. Although there are energy savings with CRTs and OLED (don't most android phones use OLED? so that might be the new point of savings)
- rexreed 13y agoHow could there possibly be "no" to this from the Fed. Govt? If you don't need to print, then don't print. If you print, then print in a way that saves ink / toner. Why not? How could the Federal Government possibly object? It's a "Yes And" solution (to use Improv Comedy lingo). If you need to print, do it in a way that saves money. There's no reason not to.
- Fomite 13y agoSince many documents are not just "text on a page", one might wonder how much it will cost to lay things out using a more efficient font.
- gagaga 13y agoChange the typeface may result in layout issues. That could be a reason not to.
- dragonwriter 13y ago> If you print, then print in a way that saves ink / toner. Why not? How could the Federal Government possibly object? Because there are other considerations with print besides ink/toner costs of printing. Like readability (including readability in the presence of real-world printing errors, since that means less chance of extra prints being made at additional cost.)
- anigbrowl 13y agoThe most obvious objection would be that Federal Government does not, in fact, print everything in Times New Roman to begin with. I just reached into my filing cabinet and grabbed some random documents from my 'Taxes' folder; turns out the IRS communicates mostly in Helvetica or some similar Sans Serif font. this whole story is based on the implicit assumption that nobody in the government has ever thought about this issue before. As so often, that assumption seems quite inaccurate.
- illuminate 13y ago"How could there possibly be "no" to this from the Fed. Govt?" Because legibility is more important than laser toner.
- pekk 13y agoThis title is terrible, but it might be the content too. Local teen has one weird trick! The big bad government hates him!
- mxfh 13y agoWhile this is arguable clever, a similiar concept has been known for ages to traditional printers. There is a whole class of typefaces optimized for high speed, low cost/low quality printing, which pre-compensates the letterform for expected ink bleeding, so called Ink Traps[1][2]. They are highly optimized for a specific printing method, the font size and the paper-quality used, and don't translate well to non-ink based printing. The problem with current desktop publishing fonts is that they can't possibly be optimized for every single use case on screen and for all of the myriad types of printing so robustness while maintaining legibility is key. Especially if the product is expected to be photocopied I would always go for a reasonable bolder weight, uncondensed typeface rather than losing information. Also make sure the 8 is distinct enough from a 6 [3] (Times New Roman beats Arial by lengths in this aspect) [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ink_trap http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ink_trap [2] http://designmind.frogdesign.com/blog/calculated-errors-the-ink-trap.html http://designmind.frogdesign.com/blog/calculated-errors-the-... [3] http://www.dkriesel.com/en/blog/2013/0802_xerox-workcentres_are_switching_written_numbers_when_scanning http://www.dkriesel.com/en/blog/2013/0802_xerox-workcentres_...
- johngalt 13y agoIT perspective: Interesting and subtle change. However it will likely be net negative. Most high volume copiers/printers are laser and/or covered by a cost per copy maintenance agreement. Meaning that most organizations pay the same price for a page regardless of how much toner is used on that page. Contrast this with the cost of enforcing a single font family across millions of systems and documents. There are a large number of unseen costs here. Imagine 10 years from now some vendor responding to an RFP for healthcare.gov v2.0. The government insisting that the source code be converted to garamond for the weekly status reports. The HN posts that day will be about how ridiculous of a requirement this is.
- wffurr 13y agoI was just thinking that there was no analysis of the cost to roll out Garamond to all the machines and software in the federal government – I imagine it would be quite expensive.
- maerF0x0 13y agoas contracts expire, market forces will come into play. Their vendor should be selling them "Use this font and we'll cut your cost by $1M" (and pocket the diff).
- thisisdave 13y agoMy recollection is that, for a given point size, Garamond uses fewer pages, not just less ink. I often switched from Times New Roman to Garamond when I needed to squeeze extra text in under the page limit, back when I was in school.
- reeses 13y agoIt is apparent you have not written many grant applications. :-) For example, from the NIH (https://grants.nih.gov/grants/writing_application.htm https://grants.nih.gov/grants/writing_application.htm): Remember the Details! Below are tips to assist you in meeting the requirements on font, font size, margins and spacing. Be sure to follow the format in the instructions and label sections as requested. Use an Arial, Helvetica, Palatino Linotype, or Georgia typeface, a black font color, and a font size of 11 points or larger. (A Symbol font may be used to insert Greek letters or special characters; the font size requirement still applies.) Type density, including characters and spaces, must be no more than 15 characters per inch. Type may be no more than six lines per inch. Use standard paper size (8 ½" x 11) . Use at least one-half inch margins (top, bottom, left, and right) for all pages. No information should appear in the margins.
- zeidrich 13y agoThe problem with this kind of initiative is that it uses humans difficulty with recognizing the scale of large numbers. We see a savings of $400 million and think "we should do this!" But it's a drop in the bucket even if it were that much of a savings. If each government employee needs to change their font, or needs to set it as the default font, or needs technical support to configure the defaults in their word processor. If IT needs to modify images to use this font as a default. Just these actions are going to cost a significant portion of that $400 million when you consider it across the millions of federal staff. This also assumes things like the government is actually paying for ink or toner in quantity, instead of, for instance, holding a contract with Xerox who charges per impression rather than based on how much ink you use. It also assumes that there is no difference in legibility between the fonts. That people with vision impairments will not have difficulty with reading the document. An easy way to think about whether an initiative like this is reasonable is to think about whether it makes a lot of sense for any individual to do. Do you think you, individually, could realize any significant savings by changing your fonts? If it only makes sense when millions of people do it at once, and even then only when certain assumptions are met, and then only saves a few dollars per person per year, then it actually is more likely to cost a lot more in overhead to make sure it happens than it will ever save.
- winslow 13y ago"But it's a drop in the bucket even if it were that much of a savings." Yes, everything is a drop in the bucket when looking at the Federal bugdet and the current debt of 17.5 trillion [1]. However, a 14 year old kid has a well thought out and proven plan to save money. Where do you recommend we start? The drops fill up the bucket faster than you think. [1] - http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/ http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/
- jberryman 13y agoActually there's a small handful of things that are the drivers of the debt: stupid tax cuts, stupid wars, issues with Medicare and a few other things; the drops don't add up, they just distract
- 13y ago
- drakaal 13y agoThere are legal requirements to publish many things as Paper, so the Fed will be in the business of printing for a long time. I think for this solution to work they should actually consider even more extreme type faces, font sizes, and shades of gray. How are we to know that just making the letters "weight" lower wouldn't have the same effect? Clearly we should commission a team of 12 experts to study which fonts cost the most to print, their legibility by a group of 100 Americans who represent the diverse age and backgrounds of American Citizens, and how fast they can read them, factoring their average wage to also value the man power cost of the new fonts. To this end I'm submitting to my senator a proposal that outlines a $1 billion earmark for research in to the cost savings available through a mandate to use an alternate, but yet undetermined font. Additionally to avoid copyright issues on fonts, $4 billion will be set aside to find a team to create a new public domain font that will be accessible to anyone. In as soon as 5 years we should have a new font selected, and as early as 2030 all new documents will be printed in the new font. Lastly all existing public works will be reprinted in the new font. We expect completion of this project by 2050. By 2050 the war with Russia, and China should be over, and the United States of the Northern Hemisphere will be operating in only one language Chinglussian. All documents will be printed in this. Adding the additional characters that Chinglussian requires should only cost another 8 Bitcoin. (the rate of inflation on BTC is expected to be practically infinite as all the worlds wealth packs in to 40M coins). We have already reserved those 8 Bitcoins, so as long as they aren't lent to another group in the next 35 years the proposed budget will account for that.
- palakchokshi 13y agoInstead of changing the font on screen for documents can Printers have a setting that would allow all printing to happen in Garamond or one of the cheaper to print fonts? That way you have best of both worlds. Your screen fonts will be what you like while your printed font will be the cheaper one.
- johnvschmitt 13y agoRather than attempt to get millions of people to manually change fonts, just make "Skimpy Print" a layer that fits in between the print button & the printer driver? http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Skimpy_20Print_20Default http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Skimpy_20Print_20Default BTW: More ink is saved by image detection & changes than fonts. And, this is all half-baked.
- Ryel 13y agoThere's always going to be a more efficient way, but when nobody else is doing anything actionable, who cares? Congrats to the kid, he got his 15 minutes of fame. I hope it will motivate him to continue improving this world. The benefit for the rest of us is that hopefully with all of this attention, someone more qualified will come along and actually start some significant changes.
- Jugurtha 13y agoJust as an exercise, do Ctrl+F in your browser and count how many "but" there are in this thread. He's a good kid, but.. It's nice, but.. The "yes, but" men attack. The knack to find problems in each solution..
- illuminate 13y agoIt's an attempt at politeness, not a strategy in itself.
- dkrich 13y agoKudos on thinking outside the box. My $0.02 on why this wouldn't fly- he's examining the problem from a bird's eye view, ie, the entire government expenditure. Documents, however, are printed by teams, usually small one's for whom even a 30% ink savings wouldn't make a dent compared to the money they spend elsewhere. Thus no motivation for each team, and thus no major movement to change behavior. If the teams are anything like ones that I've been a part of, a lead will look at a document printed in Garamond, proclaim he doesn't like it/can't read it, and ask for it to be reprinted in readable format.
- northisup 13y agoHas the 6th grader ever make a photocopy in triplicate of Times New Roman vs Garamond?
- jmadsen 13y agoThis was done by the UW-Green Bay years ago (among many, many others, I'm sure) and was featured in Dan Lewis' "Now I Know" newsletter about a week ago. ( http://nowiknow.com/ http://nowiknow.com/ ) Still a worthwhile thing to report, I guess, but somehow manages to still be very "the media is clueless"
- faddotio 13y agoThis 6th Grader Stood Up To Government To Tell Them Something... And I Think The Results Were Amazing.
- lyndonh 13y agoCandy crush saga run via Facebook seems to really hit the processor hard. It seems to me that we could save half the artic if we could ban it.
- olssy 13y ago400 million saved is 400 million removed from the economy, isn't it?
- stefan_kendall3 13y agoBroken windows fallacy. I'll leave it to you to figure that out.
- olssy 13y agoThe broken window fallacy only works if the funds being spent can and will be spent in a more productive way.
- mxfh 13y agoThe US Government could probably save substantially more by not printing blacked out pages like this for public hearings: http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lnbfetnw5V1qbqm2bo1_r1_250.gif http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lnbfetnw5V1qbqm2bo1_r1_250... 900 pages of this at 5:10 in this 2011 Daily Show clip. http://thedailyshow.cc.com/videos/1mdpat/the-fast-and-the-furious---mexico-grift http://thedailyshow.cc.com/videos/1mdpat/the-fast-and-the-fu...
- cabalamat 13y agoWould it even save the govermnent much money? Sure, if I print in a thinner font on my laser printer, the ink will last longer. But if I'm printing thousands of the same document, the print company will charge me exactly the same price regardless of what font I use, of whether I use big blocks of colour, or any other consideration of how much ink I use. I suspect that when printing at scale, the cost of ink varying by font matters little or nothing. It's certainly less important than other considerations in choosing a font: ease of reading, what tone it sets, etc.
- jokoon 13y agohonestly, millions are that much money for the federal budget...
- mxfh 13y agoThis topic just irks me, it's sounds clever at first, but anyone who has just a little education in print publishing (anyone who knows what CMYK stands for) should be aware that there are way better ways make an impact on the amount of ink used (not to say, saving money). - If they would use something like InDesign they could print everything in 50% Black and could instantly save 50% no matter what. - Even worse is Rich Black[1] printing which wastes 3 times the amount of ink/toner namely CMY instead of K (black). - That the costs of getting something printed by an actual print service company by printing press are surprisingly low given digital print ready delivery and break even pretty fast, especially for colored prints, where the quality is also vastly superior. - any school or organization of similar or bigger size should use professional office grade black only laser printers for all default print jobs, which should keep cost way below 5 cents/page. At all costs stay away from consumer grade inkjet printers. And get only one! office grade Inkjet printer with big and per color replaceable cartridges which pretty fast compensates for it's initial cost and is also superior to color laser printing.‡ Here is the actual study: http://emerginginvestigators.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Mirchandani-2013.pdf http://emerginginvestigators.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/... This study completely omits to differentiate between text and graphic type printing yet makes this quite thoughtful remark: In addition, fonts may be chosen with a specific purpose in mind (e.g. aesthetics), but posters and other graphical design in which font type could have meaningful impact would usually be printed on a color printer. Color toner ink costs for printing were not tested in this study. Another related way of saving ink is the following: when an assignment is photocopied from a book, a black border in the periphery is sometimes printed. This black border gets copied, leading to a large wastage of ink. “Whiting out” the black periphery would further reduce the ink usage in the school district. This impact would be in addition to what was investigated in this study Let the kids have Comic Sans if they want to, but let them know what it cost what it needs to print their essays on inkjet printers on a rainbow colored background. Normal text covers only between 2.8%[2] to 5% of a page. In other ways a page with fully colored background can easily use more than 60 times (100/5 * 3 Colors) the amount of ink than a simple text page. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_black http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_black [2] http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr.-Grauert-Brief http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr.-Grauert-Brief [German DIN Standard Test Letter] ‡ http://venturebeat.com/2014/03/24/hps-new-enterprise-ink-based-printers-can-operate-at-twice-the-speed-and-half-the-cost-of-laser-printers/ http://venturebeat.com/2014/03/24/hps-new-enterprise-ink-bas... (ballpark figure for original HP colored inks here is $100/100ml compared to up to above $500/100ml for consumer grade ink portions)
- vvoyer 13y agoInk prices are high for end consumers, I bet the US gov does not use an HP-xx for printing but rather big systems where ink price is less than paper. I have been visiting a newspaper printing factory and they said the ink price was a LOT LOT cheapear than the paper which cost a lot to them. Ink is expensive for end-user consumers, not for big printing systems.