US government could save $136 million each year by changing to a font that uses less ink.
Allgov.com reported on 14 year-old Suvir Mirchandani’s experiment, which looked at four different fonts to see which used the least amount of ink and found that if the US government used the Garamond font exclusively, it could save almost 30 percent of its ink costs valued at $136 million (€99 million).
Mirchandani reportedly conducted the experiment after noticing an increase in the number of hand-outs he was receiving at school and endeavouring to help save the school district money. The four fonts used on school hand-outs – Garamond, Times New Roman, Century Gothic and Comic Sans – were analysed in the experiment to test which used the least amount of ink, with Mirchandani concluding that the school district could cut ink usage by 24 percent and save $21,000 (€15,000) annually if it only used Garamond.
The findings were published in the Journal for Emerging Investigators (JEI) – a journal founded by Harvard grad students to give “secondary school students a place to publish scientific projects” – which then asked Mirchandani to apply the experiment to the federal government based on the General Services Administration’s (GSA) estimated cost of ink, which is $467 million (€339 million).
While the Government Printing Office (GPO) reportedly described the findings as “remarkable”, it wouldn’t say whether it would change its font; with the office more likely to focus on moving content online.