To reduce ink use and save money, the University of Wisconsin Green Bay‘s IT department has changed the default font for Outlook to Century Gothic, which it says requires 30% less ink in printouts than Arial, the most commonly used default font. Ink accounts for about 60% of the cost of a printed page, the IT unit says.

With shrinking budgets and increasing environmental concerns, CIT has been exploring ways to reduce campus printing costs and consumption of supplies. One suggestion that has been made on several occasions is to use a font that consumes less ink and toner. To that end, we have selected the Century Gothic font for the campus choice award! The Century Gothic font looks good onscreen and on the printed page (at least for general purposes), and it uses 30% less ink than the most commonly used default font – Arial. This is a big deal because ink accounts for about 60% of the cost of the printed page, and it is not cheap — about $10,000 a gallon – with toner cartridges and drums not far behind.

As a result, and after consultation with the Technology Council, we have decided to change the default font for Outlook across campus to Century Gothic. Of course, you may change back to a different default font if you wish, but we hope you will “think green” as you make your choice. This change will occur the next time you reboot your PC.

In addition, we encourage everyone to switch to Century Gothic as their default font in Entourage for Macintosh, Word, and Excel. We did not do this automatically because it would mean wiping out all your other customized application settings. Be aware that changing the default font would only affect new documents and messages. In addition, you can always change the default font for any single document.

Please refer to our eHelp instructions for information on How to change your default font in Outlook, Word, and Excel and How to change your default font in Entourage, Word, and Excel on a Macintosh.

We have had numerous inquiries about how we implemented this change and our resources. Please see the links below for more information:

http://blog.printer.com/2009/04/printing-costs-does-font-choice-make-a-difference/

http://ca.tech.yahoo.com/blogs/the_gadget_hound/rss/article/3751

http://www.printgreener.com/pdfs/GreenPrint%20White%20Paper%20September%2008.pdf

http://pcworld.about.com/news/Aug282003id112199.htm

Source: University of Wisconsin – Green Bay

Tags: Arial, centurygothic, Font, Money, Printing, University of Wisconsin Green Bay, University of Wisconsin–Green Bay, Word

This entry was posted by Jan Havmoeller on Thursday, April 22nd, 2010 at 9:02 am and is filed under General Posts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.