The need to increase sustainability and lower overhead has spurred publishers and printers to incorporate a host of costcutting and environmentally friendly practices into their operations, such as printing on demand and manufacturing books closer to their destination. Designers and typesetters have an important role to play, too, and one of the best exemplars is 2K/ DENMARK, a typeface and book design company that specializes in long and highly complex texts, such as Bibles.
The 37-year-old company is meeting the need to reduce paper usage by creating fonts that fit more text per page without compromising readability. “As designers and typesetters, we are the link between publishers and printers/manufacturers,” says 2K/DENMARK CEO and founder Klaus E. Krogh. “This unique position has provided us with insights from both camps. With our decades-long experience with designing and typesetting Bibles, we saw a need for compact typesetting in the general book market.”
The fonts are part of the company’s Sustainable Typesetting® project, which has earned it an Environmental Accreditation Badge from the BIC. The Sustainable Typesetting® model uses type design and layout principles to simultaneously cut 20% of publishers’ complete production line costs and 20% of CO2 emissions while also enhancing books’ readability by 20%. “We meet publishers’ need to create books with larger fonts that don’t contribute to unnecessary global warming,” Krogh says. “What we do offers the option to reduce cost and emissions by 20% on average across the entire publishing supply chain.”
This solution is a boon for production managers struggling to balance increasing paper and production costs with hard limits on book prices while meeting the higher demand for readability and increased pressure from both lawmakers and customers to cut carbon emissions. The fonts enhance the reading experience as well.
When HarperCollins commissioned 2K/ DENMARK to design the HC Arc font, the publisher saw great results. HCI production director Magnus Olsson says that after HC Arc’s introduction, the publisher saw a savings of 10%–12% reduction in page count, resulting in significant financial savings. Additionally, the change was wellreceived, with no negative feedback from readers. Encouraged by these outcomes, the publisher is now planning to aim for savings of up to 25% by 2025.
For his part, Krogh is glad publishers and manufacturers are focused on becoming more environmentally friendly, and he’s excited by the innovation sparked in response to publishers’ need to both be more sustainable and cut costs. Looking out at the entire industry ecosystem–regarding paper, energy, legislation, and so on–Krogh says it’s clear that the challenge of rising overheads will continue, and he urges publishers to act sooner rather than later. “We are not at a point where companies can survive five to ten years before taking action, so it is urgent to make decisions right now,” he says.
