Suvir Mirchandani is just 14-years-old, but that hasn’t stopped him from coming up with a way to potentially save the U.S. government hundreds a of millions of dollars. After noticing the number of print outs used at his own public school, Mirchandani began experimenting with different typefaces, charting their size and calculating how much ink they each used. Because ink is ridiculously expensive, minor changes to typeface can equal big savings when applied to high volumes of work. He calculated that if both federal and state government offices switched to Garamond font, it could save more than $370 million each year. After submitting his findings to the Journal for Emerging Investigators (JEI)—a group that recognizes the research of young students—his work is starting to get national attention. Unfortunately, even though he’s offering a remarkably simple solution that could save taxpayers millions of dollars, CNN said a representative from the Government Printing Office was, for some reason, “noncommittal on whether the GPO would introduce changes to typeface.” Don’t worry Suvir, at the least, you have a bright future in the fast-growing printer industry …
