Fonts and ink

kw: observations, typography, fonts, efficiency

I heard about this unique ink-saving font from a friend. As you can see, it preserves a "heavy" outline, based on the font Vera Sans, but uses "holes" to remove about 20% of the ink that would ordinarily be used to print. It is found here. At the moment, it has only a Regular version (at least in the free download), so converting a page to print using it will lose any bolding or italic emphasis.

That got me thinking. I've been collecting selected free fonts for years, so I looked through my archives. There are other ways of using less ink while maintaining a good, readable look.

While Verdana is heavily used for web pages, the slightly lighter Arial is used in many, many Windows documents for printing. It is the default in Microsoft Excel and in many PowerPoint templates, for example. However, it is still a bit of a heavyweight, with a large x-height and thick strokes.

I chose the letters e, t, and a to display because together they represent 30% of all letters used in English text. If you consider punctuation, the total proportion drops a couple of points. The caps are shown below the uncials to illustrate the normal leading (or ledding), the extra space added between the topmost ascender and lowermost descender. When Arial is used at 12 point size, default leading is 14.5 points from baseline to baseline.

Because of kerning, and variations from typeface to typeface in spacing standards, the measurements I report below are based on the ink width of the letters and include no between-letter spaces.

Times New Roman, the default font in Microsoft Word, is probably used the most. I once read that 90% if all keystrokes on all desktop computers go into word-processed documents.

The weighted strokes, with various amounts of each letter composed of hairlines, makes TNR a more ink-efficient font than Arial. In a moment, we'll see by how much.

The leading of TNR and Arial are the same, 14.5 points for 12-point type size. By the way, if you want to save paper also on a longer document, you can change the leading to 12 points, meaning that the descender on a "y" could potentially just touch the top of the "A". This is called Solid Setting. I haven't looked into it in detail, but there may be extra space built into the font definition to keep even solid set type from such "collisions".

Years ago I bought a four-face family named Zapf Humanist 601 BT. It has the kind of weighting that TNR uses, but is sans serif, so no ink is used making the little serifs on certain letters. I like it because it is, to me, the most beautiful of the sans serif fonts. At this size, you can see some of the styling and shaping of the strokes.

Whether by chance or by design, it has the same leading as both TNR and Arial. Just by looking at it, one may see that it will use less ink on a printed page than Arial.

This is the only font I've paid for. All others I look for in freeware sites. Similar fonts that are free include (names only, no links; you can look them up) Optimum and Optane. There is a free version of Optima out there also; it is the one the Zapf font is based on, but be careful. Bitstream sells their own version of Optima, and pirated copies abound.

A better comparison of the "e" glyphs from these three fonts can be seen on this gridded image. I digitized these glyphs to determine their ink loading percentages. This is the amount covered by the glyph divided by the rectangle defined by the the baseline-to-baseline distance at normal leading, and the ink-to-ink width of the glyph:

• Arial = 22%
• TNR = 16%
• Zapf = 14.5%

The Zapf font uses (comparing percents to percents here; don't get lost) 66% of the ink that Arial does, and 91% of the ink that TNR uses. TNR uses 73% of the ink that Arial does. Some of this efficiency comes from smaller x-height, but much also comes from the more slender average strokes.

The same analysis for the "t" glyphs shows:

• Arial = 25%
• TNR = 17%
• Zapf = 16%

The Zapf amounts for the "t" glyphs are 73% compared to Arial and 94% compared to TNR, while TNR uses 77% of the ink that Arial does.

The similarity of these figures indicates that the two weighted fonts are well balanced. Their look on the page is the best confirmation of this.

Now, there is yet another way to use less ink. Use the next smaller type size. One company I worked for, before issuing Microsoft Office software, had the default text size in MS Word changed from 12 point to 11 point. There is little visible difference on a printed page, to the eye, but the smaller size uses 84% as much ink. That alone is a 16% saving.

If you want a really thin, ink-efficient font, try this one. It is mid-page at fontspace.com's thin category. I have done no metrics on it, but it clearly will use very little ink. The problem is, there are no (as yet) italic and italic-bold versions, though there is a boldface that is still quite light.

If a body is determined to save printer ink or toner, perhaps some of these ideas will help.