Font Wars: Microsoft Wins

[sechs]

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1919127,00.html

 

[Pradeep]

I thought the font wars had been over since the days of Adobe Type Manager vs Microsoft?

 

[Chewy509]

After reading the article, it has nothing to do with the Adobe vs MS on font engines.

It's about Ikea (the furniture maker) using Verdana as the primary font in it's 2010 catalogue, vs the older serif font it used in 2009.

Yep, they switched from a serif font to a sans-serif font in the new catalogue, and the design world is outraged!!!

PS. The only connection to Microsoft, is that MS developed the font Verdana for use on the PC as an easy to read font. Talk about a misleading title!

 

[LunarMist]

Bah. I remember when type was type, not a silly font, and real men used lead Linotypes. Helvetica and Times Roman forever.

 

[ddrueding]

I actually spent a couple hours reading about fonts at one point, and learned quite a bit. I then went back to using Tahoma for everything.

 

[Mercutio]

I did some math and figured out that my company would save about 3% annually on ink if we printed our manuals in Garamond rather than (sob) Comic Sans and almost 36% if we quit printing everything in color.

My company spends more for ink than it does on any individual's salary, so this is not insignificant.

 

[MaxBurn]

Wow, what the hell do they do with that much printed material?

 

[LunarMist]

I did some math and figured out that my company would save about 3% annually on ink if we printed our manuals in Garamond rather than (sob) Comic Sans and almost 36% if we quit printing everything in color.

My company spends more for ink than it does on any individual's salary, so this is not insignificant.

Which press are you using? How large are the runs?

 

[Mercutio]

Which press are you using? How large are the runs?

We use Xerox solid ink printers to print our manuals in-house. A typical manual might be 100 - 250 pages long and has color on every page. I don't have the exact paper use right here in front of me but our costs for consumables are staggering.

I've also advocated for PDF and/or an additional fee for a paper manual, or for outsourcing the work to a true print shop, but the person I work for only wants to deal with local businesses and the nearest non-Kinkos shop isn't price-competitive with our costs (which, by the way, is really, really sad).

I've also tried to make the case for leasing a sophisticated Printer/Copier from Canon or Konica or Xerox, but that hasn't gotten me anywhere either.

 

[mubs]

We use Xerox solid ink printers to print our manuals in-house. A typical manual might be 100 - 250 pages long and has color on every page. I don't have the exact paper use right here in front of me but our costs for consumables are staggering.

HP must be turning a sickly gray reading this.

 

[Pradeep]

Full color is going to cost a bundle per page unless you are talking offset printing, which doesn't make sense for small runs. Are these manuals for a training company (Office, MS certs etc?)

Cheapest color I have seen is single color laser highlight (red for statements) on a Xerox 92C. Theres very minimal excess packaging on those toner tubs.

 

[sechs]

The only connection to Microsoft, is that MS developed the font Verdana for use on the PC as an easy to read font. Talk about a misleading title!

Obviously, you didn't read the article.

Microsoft made Verdana for the web. It is a screen font. It is a piece of shit. It does not bring anything new to the font design table. Microsoft bundles it with its software so that you don't have to use anybody else.

Futura is a real typeface, meant for printing.

Both fonts are sans serif.

To note, Verdana is a TrueType font, while Futura is released as a PostScript font.