This document provides 5 tips for reducing printing costs without changing printers or suppliers: 1. Use ecofonts, which have small holes in letters, to save up to 50% on ink usage for text documents. 2. Change the font type, as some fonts like Comic Sans use more ink than others like Garamond. 3. Decrease the font size from 12 to 11 points to fit more text on pages and save on ink and paper. 4. Use screenshot tools to print only needed portions of webpages or documents instead of entire pages. 5. Ban printing one day a week to encourage planning printing and reducing unnecessary outputs.

1. 5 Simple Tips to
Reduce Your Printing Costs…
Even Using Your Existing
Printers and Consumable
Supplier!

2. 5 Simple Ways to Reduce Printing Costs...
without having to print less, change your existing printers or your existing consumable
supplier!
Since 2004 the cost of printer cartridges has increased 33% quicker than inflation.
It’s no wonder then that most businesses who get in touch with us do so because no matter
what initiatives they try to save money on printing it has very little impact on the bottom-
line as the raw cost is increasing so fast.
What most people don’t know is that before cutting off the plug or banning colour printing
there are many simple things you can do that will reduce printer consumable usage
instantly, making your printing much more affordable.
This report focuses on our top five tips, quick wins you can implement or train in minutes
that will reduce your current spend without having to change your printer hardware or even
your existing consumable supplier.
Read on to find out our top five cost saving printing tips!
Tip #1
USE ECOFONTS
ECOFONTS are a great way to help you reduce your spend if you print mainly text.
So, what is an ECOFONT?
ECOFONT is like the popular ARIAL font, but, it has little holes punched in the letters that aren’t
really visible to the naked eye in the printed document. A close up example of an ECOFONT can be
seen below;
Using an ECOFONT will save you money as no ink is required to print the holes in the text, an
amazingly simple but effective idea that could save you up to 50% using an ECOFONT versus the
standard font equivalent.
ECOFONT is available to download for Windows, Mac and Linux, you can find more information at
www.ecofont.com

3. Tip #2
CHANGE YOUR FONT TYPE
Consider the following scenario, you need to print a document to distribute to the customers. You
want your sales team to hand this document over when they next visit as a way to get their foot into
the door, a so called reason for calling. This document needs to be of a high quality so you are
unable to use ECOFONTS which sacrifices slightly on readability.
Can you produce a high quality print whilst keeping an eye on the budget?
The answer is YES. Changing the font you print in will affect how much ink you use.
For example, in primary schools the most common font used is Comic Sans MS which uses 46% more
ink than the font I am typing in now Calibri.
Garamond, the font I am typing in now is the most cost effective font we have tested. This font is
unlikely to be alien to your customer’s eyes... most of the Harry Potter books, which have sold over 450
million copies worldwide were printed in Garamond font size 12.
Tip #3
CHANGE YOUR FONT SIZE
Sometimes a complex problem has a simple solution.
Although this is pretty obvious whenever we mention it to the businesses purse-string holders as a
solution to saving money it always amazes me how many people have not already considered this!
Changing your font size from 12 to 11 will save a considerable amount of money as the characters
are much smaller to print. You will also notice that you are able to fit more words on each page,
saving on paper costs too!
When you combine this with tip #2 you will notice a considerable cost saving and will be able to
make your budget stretch much further.

4. Tip #4
USE SNIPPING TOOL OR GRAB
Sometimes you need to print something, in particular from a website or PDF document and only
need a small section of what you see, however, when you press print it prints everything on the
screen.
Printing unnecessary adverts, images and text is very expensive. A great solution to this is to use the
snipping tool in Windows 7 upwards or Grab if you use a Mac.
The snipping tool or Grab provides a simple interface to capture and save screen shots allowing you
to select the portion of the screen you want to print. They are very simple to use; you simply drag
your mouse to draw a box around the area you want to capture. You can then save or print it saving
a ton of ink and paper in the process.
These tools are great fun and easy to use. They also make staff think more carefully about what they
print which is great practice for cost saving in the long run.
You can find out more at
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-GB/windows7/products/features/snipping-tool
https://support.apple.com/kb/PH6846?locale=en_US
Tip #5
BAN PRINTING ONE DAY A WEEK
No, seriously: Every Friday for instance, turn off all the printers, lock them away if you have to!
The complaints at first will be fierce and furious and you will hear considerable begging that “I must
print this email” or “I really need to print my boarding pass right now”
However, it won’t take more than a few weeks for people to figure out how to survive without their
printer one day a week, at this point you could go even further... two days a week? three???
You will know when you have reached breaking point but if you and your staff can get to the point
where your printer is off more than on you may be able to ditch it altogether!
Ok, maybe not... but you will learn to start to plan your printing in advance which should see
spontaneous printing kept to a minimum, saving on printing costs until the myth of “the paperless
office” becomes a welcome reality.