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The Good News Podcast is your thrice weekly reminder that not all news is bad.
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Hi, I'm Neil, the host of the Good news podcast.
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This is your source for good news, fun stories and Sonic Joy.
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All of this goodness is coming to you from beautiful Chicago Illinois.
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Today's good news comes to us from the book publishing industry and specifically the mega publisher Harper Collins, one of the four biggest publishers in the world.
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So they are printing a ton of books for these books to be printed, designers and layout specialists and book pros need to figure out how to actually print it.
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I'm talking about layout and font and this is the type of story that I just think is awesome.
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Harper Collins has recently been trying to figure out if they can use different fonts to maintain the same readability, but print books with fewer pages.
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I read about this in fast company and they have some great visual examples of what this can look like.
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But I'll just say that it really does seem like unnoticeable differences between two fonts can have a big impact, particularly from a publisher as big as Harper Collins.
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According to this article, almost 250 million printed pages have already been saved with these tweaks to find these ideal ecofriendly fonts.
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The designers at Harper Collins used a big example book and experimented with 50 different fonts and of course, they had to balance out fonts that were easy to read and fewer pages.
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I'm sure it's not the same as just changing a font in your word processing software.
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And eventually they ended up with 15 fonts that strike that right balance between easy to read and using less paper.
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From what I can see at most, the kerning is a little bit tighter from my limited knowledge.
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It seems like those letters are just a little bit closer together than with the other font which over the course of 600 pages can save some real paper.
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And of course, this isn't purely altruistic printing.
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Less pages also saves the company money.
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If there's no impact on readers, a better bottom line for the company and more trees left standing on the earth, then that feels like a win, win, win.
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I will link to the fast company article that has more information worth a read.
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If you're interested.
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That is the good news I have for you today.
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Enjoy the rest of your day.
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Thanks for listening.
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If you've got good news or an idea for the show.
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The music you hear on the show is from Paddington Bear.
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Have a great day.