300 million pages saved with NIV Comfort Print®

In April 2023, Zondervan Bibles, a division of HarperCollins Christian Publishing, announced a reduction in 300 million printed pages since the exclusive release of the NIV Comfort Print typeface in 2017.

As part of the company’s Beautiful Bibles initiative launched in 2015, Zondervan partnered with 2K/DENMARK, the foremost Bible type foundry, to create a typeface that uniquely complements the world’s bestselling modern-English Bible translation—the New International Version (NIV). NIV Comfort Print is a highly readable typeface that uses a unique mix of open and closed letters, making it easier to read for long periods of time. It is also spatially efficient, directly contributing to the company’s initiative to reduce its carbon footprint and reduce unnecessary paper usage.

“Increasing readability for the NIV while efficiently reducing paper is a breakthrough and could only be achieved through the collaboration of our partners in every area of the organization,” said Melinda Bouma, vice president and publisher of Zondervan Bible Group. “We are so proud of this accomplishment and the ability to be good stewards of God’s Word as well as our natural resources.”

“We are delighted that in our quest to develop readable, elegant Bible typefaces, we continue to contribute to long-term sustainability,” said Melinda Bouma, vice president and publisher of Bibles for Zondervan. “It is gratifying to know that around 4,000 trees were saved due to the development of these proprietary typefaces.”

What does 300 million pages look like?

• Stacked up, the pages would be more than three miles high, or roughly 12 Empire State Buildings.

• Placed next to each other, they would cover 2,000 football fields.

• If the pages were laid end-to-end, they would stretch further than 1.5 times around the earth.

The impact of the Comfort Print typeface has been felt by readers in every category of Zondervan Bibles. But it is the everyday reading Bibles, the editions that readers carry with them daily, that have seen the largest total number of saved pages. The single largest page savings across any line belonged to the NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible, saving over 350 pages after being typeset in NIV Comfort Print.