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| Less ink - more savings | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Mar 28 2014, 05:53 PM (276 Views) | |
| George K | Mar 28 2014, 05:53 PM Post #1 |
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Finally
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http://edition.cnn.com/2014/03/27/living/student-money-saving-typeface-garamond-schools/index.html An e. You can write it with one fluid swoop of a pen or one tap of the keyboard. The most commonly used letter in the English dictionary. Simple, right? Now imagine it printed out millions of times on thousands of forms and documents. Then think of how much ink would be needed. OK, so that may have been a first for you, but it came naturally to 14-year-old Suvir Mirchandani when he was trying to think of ways to cut waste and save money at his Pittsburgh-area middle school. It all started as a science fair project. As a neophyte sixth-grader at Dorseyville Middle School, Suvir noticed he was getting a lot more handouts than he did in elementary school. Interested in applying computer science to promote environmental sustainability, Suvir decided he was going to figure out if there was a better way to minimize the constant flurry of paper and ink. Reducing paper use through recycling and dual-sided printing had been talked about before as a way to save money and conserve resources, but there was less attention paid to the ink for which the paper served as a canvas for history and algebra handouts. "Ink is two times more expensive than French perfume by volume," Suvir says with a chuckle. He's right: Chanel No. 5 perfume costs $38 per ounce, while the equivalent amount of Hewlett-Packard printer ink can cost up to $75. So Suvir decided to focus his project on finding ways to cut down on the costly liquid. Collecting random samples of teachers' handouts, Suvir concentrated on the most commonly used characters (e, t, a, o and r). First, he charted how often each character was used in four different typefaces: Garamond, Times New Roman, Century Gothic and Comic Sans. Then he measured how much ink was used for each letter, using a commercial tool called APFill® Ink Coverage Software. Next he enlarged the letters, printed them and cut them out on cardstock paper to weigh them to verify his findings. He did three trials for each letter, graphing the ink usage for each font. From this analysis, Suvir figured out that by using Garamond with its thinner strokes, his school district could reduce its ink consumption by 24%, and in turn save as much as $21,000 annually. Encouraged by his teacher, Suvir looked to publish his findings and stumbled on the Journal for Emerging Investigators (JEI), a publication founded by a group of Harvard grad students in 2011 that provides a forum for the work of middle school and high school students. It has the same standards as academic journals, and each submission is reviewed by grad students and academics. Sarah Fankhauser, one of JEI's founders, says that of the nearly 200 submissions they have received since 2011, Suvir's project was a real standout: "We were so impressed. We really could really see the real-world application in Suvir's paper." Using the General Services Administration's estimated annual cost of ink -- $467 million -- Suvir concluded that if the federal government used Garamond exclusively it could save nearly 30% -- or $136 million per year. An additional $234 million could be saved annually if state governments also jumped on board, he reported. Fankhauser said Suvir's findings were so clear, simple and well thought-out, it had the peer reviewers at JEI asking, "How much potential savings is really out there?" For the answer, JEI challenged Suvir to apply his project to a larger scale: the federal government. With an annual printing expenditure of $1.8 billion, the government was a much more challenging task than his school science project. Suvir repeated his tests on five sample pages from documents on the Government Printing Office website and got similar results -- change the font, save money.
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A guide to GKSR: Click "Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08 Nothing is as effective as homeopathy. I'd rather listen to an hour of Abba than an hour of The Beatles. - Klaus, 4/29/18 | |
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| Aqua Letifer | Mar 28 2014, 07:42 PM Post #2 |
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ZOOOOOM!
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Ouch. Anyway, this idea isn't really new. (However it is awesome that a 14-year-old went to such lengths to explore it.) There are MANY GPO standards that are just ridiculous, but I don't think Garamond's necessarily the way to go here. When mixing letters with numbers, those fonts can be hard to read. Then there's also the issue of how it looks bolded, in italics, etc. GPO's in the right if adopting a Garamond font would lead to reduced readability. EDIT Also, okay, I admit: I very much dislike the idea of cost savings being the deciding factor in choosing a font. |
| I cite irreconcilable differences. | |
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| Axtremus | Mar 29 2014, 03:48 AM Post #3 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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Heck, once you decided that saving ink should be a design goal, you can just design new fonts to meet that goal. Readability (and when applied to government printing, the ADA) be damned. Another way to save ink: Use short hands. Thx instead of Thanks. U instead of you. b4 instead of before. gr8 instead of great ... the possibilities are endless. If there is to be a follow-up study on Mr. Suvir's work, it would be to find an optimal tradeoff between readability and ink savings. |
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| Red Rice | Mar 29 2014, 04:39 AM Post #4 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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I am sure the Printer Ink Manufacturer's lobby will have something to say about all this. |
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Civilisation, I vaguely realized then - and subsequent observation has confirmed the view - could not progress that way. It must have a greater guiding principle to survive. To treat it as a carcase off which each man tears as much as he can for himself, is to stand convicted a brute, fit for nothing better than a jungle existence, which is a death-struggle, leading nowhither. I did not believe that was the human destiny, for Man individually was sane and reasonable, only collectively a fool. I hope the gunner of that Hun two-seater shot him clean, bullet to heart, and that his plane, on fire, fell like a meteor through the sky he loved. Since he had to end, I hope he ended so. But, oh, the waste! The loss! - Cecil Lewis | |
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| JBryan | Mar 29 2014, 05:19 AM Post #5 |
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I am the grey one
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Using a heiroglyphic language like Chinese would save even more but learning to read Chinese would be an expense that would not be offset by savings to the average citizen. |
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"Any man who would make an X rated movie should be forced to take his daughter to see it". - John Wayne There is a line we cross when we go from "I will believe it when I see it" to "I will see it when I believe it". Henry II: I marvel at you after all these years. Still like a democratic drawbridge: going down for everybody. Eleanor: At my age there's not much traffic anymore. From The Lion in Winter. | |
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| Aqua Letifer | Mar 29 2014, 05:57 AM Post #6 |
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ZOOOOOM!
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Yeah that is probably going to be the dumbest idea I'll have come across this week. |
| I cite irreconcilable differences. | |
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| George K | Mar 29 2014, 06:47 AM Post #7 |
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Finally
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Short week, eh? |
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A guide to GKSR: Click "Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08 Nothing is as effective as homeopathy. I'd rather listen to an hour of Abba than an hour of The Beatles. - Klaus, 4/29/18 | |
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| Aqua Letifer | Mar 29 2014, 06:53 AM Post #8 |
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ZOOOOOM!
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Naw; I didn't get out much. |
| I cite irreconcilable differences. | |
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| Kincaid | Mar 29 2014, 07:56 AM Post #9 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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Did he try Tahoma? |
| Kincaid - disgusted Republican Partisan since 2006. | |
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| Axtremus | Mar 29 2014, 10:20 AM Post #10 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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[Barney Stinson] Challenge accepted! ![]() [/Barney Stinson] |
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| Aqua Letifer | Mar 29 2014, 10:21 AM Post #11 |
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ZOOOOOM!
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| I cite irreconcilable differences. | |
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| George K | Jan 11 2016, 03:47 AM Post #12 |
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Finally
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Fake: http://www.thomasphinney.com/2014/03/saving-400m-font/ |
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A guide to GKSR: Click "Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08 Nothing is as effective as homeopathy. I'd rather listen to an hour of Abba than an hour of The Beatles. - Klaus, 4/29/18 | |
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| bachophile | Jan 11 2016, 09:06 AM Post #13 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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been tossing and turning for almost two years about that one.... |
| "I don't know much about classical music. For years I thought the Goldberg Variations were something Mr. and Mrs. Goldberg did on their wedding night." Woody Allen | |
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