Comic Sans has long been the punching bag of the typography world. It’s goofy, childish looking, and has one downfall illuminated in today’s infographic: it uses too much ink. If you’re not in the book publishing world, using the right type face is essential to keep printing costs low. Helvetica, the world’s one-type-fits-all style of font, uses 5.45 percent of a normal piece of paper in ink coverage. Compared to Garamond’s 4.47 percent, it may not seem like much of a difference – only 1 percent, right? Wrong. That can add up to billions of extra dollars spent on ink.
Switching from Helvetica (5.45) to Comic Sans (5.74) seems small. Only .29 percent, but it would actually cost $1.6 billion worth of extra ink. That’s 69 billion extra cartridges of black ink. I’m reading the first Game of Thrones book right now. It’s not a small book. The extra ink cartridges from switching Helvetica to Comic Sans could be enough ink to print 28 million copies of the first GOT books.
Comic Sans has always been a joke, but no one ever really proved with statistics why. Until today. Check out the infographic below and have your mind blow a little bit.